Belén Luengo Palomino, Paula Calvo Sánchez y Lucía Vilanova de Diego

presentan

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
PART ONE: INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
AND INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY
LESSON 1: International Organizations and the International Society
1. Historical evolution of International society
- IOs are relatively new subjects to IL but they have brought a game change: the
portray new subjects, sources and making a turn on what was considered PIL
before 1945.
- After the creation of the UN as an agreement of many states by international
treaties (not de facto), under this umbrella IOs have proliferated.
- Political ideas
We will focus on the idea of a Global political community vs. the idea that the
international community exists in anarchy (there is no central authority, just
states maximizing their utility). The evolution of IOs has been developed by the
tension between these opposite concepts.
The social contract hypothesis was created by the ones in power to legitimate
this power: the power is legitimate because at certain point individuals have
agreed to yield their natural powers and rights to a bigger authority. This theory
was first developed in the Leviathan (1651) by Hobbes: the whole community
(in the book, it refers to the community that exists within the state) is under the
umbrella of one political authority.
In PIL there is nothing like that, as the international community is decentralized
and there is not a hierarchically superior authority. However, a political idea has
been developed that there is something that ties all humanity together, which
fundaments the political community:
a) Ius gentium or “right of the peoples”: it is a notion that comes from Roman
law, applicable to cases between foreigners and Roman citizens. However,
the concept was further developed in modern times after the discovery of
America. It is based on the notion that there must be a common
understanding on what is a human being, their attributes and how they must
be treated. As such, it is well-founded on the rationality that all humans
share which provides their capacity to understand the world and what is a
fair behaviour between one another.
Evolution of the concept:
i. Catholicism: religious perspective that has important consequences
for PIL, being the first one that there is a global political community
based on the idea of God and the Pope. The Pope is a central
authority that acts as a primus inter pares to govern in non-secular
matters while kings govern in secular matters. However, the power of

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 the kings is justified by the idea that they have been designated by
God, so that kings must comply with what Catholicism prescribes.
ii. This changed in the 16th century when there was a split of the
Church: Protestantism contested that the Pope was infallible and the
only interpreter of the Bible. After terrible religious wars, there was a
settlement in 1648: The Peace of Westphalia. Its main proposition
was that regardless of the religion of the state/King, the state
maintains its sovereignty. States recognized each other equal
sovereignty regardless of the religion that they professed.
b) World government: the main portrayer of this idea is Kant, who developed
this idea in a treaty on the Perpetual Peace (1795). He said that in order to
achieve peace, there must be one political entity that centralizes the power
and decision-making so that states stop fighting themselves.
After the fall of Catholicism as the only common political idea, there was no
concept of “just war”, that is, legitimate reasons to enter war, so that there
was no excuse as to when to engage in war. Ultimately, engaging in war fell
on an arbitrary and discretionary decision of the King or the ones in power:
the equilibrium in Europe was based on the balance of the powers, so that
one state could decide to engage into war just because its neighbour became
an ally of the enemy (for example), or just any other reason for political
convenience. Accordingly, Kant thought that there should be a central
authority in order to stop war from happening; he hoped “or a perpetual
peace based on a federation of nations united in a world-republic”.
However, this “Enlightenment idea” did not go further because it contradicts
the principle of state sovereignty, which constitutes the main principle of
classical international law. Today, there still does not exist one central
authority comprising a legislative, executive and judicial power or a
universal constitution; however, it could be argued that under the umbrella of
the United Nations, contemporary international law is in fact evolving
towards a form of “world government”, for example through the prohibition
of the threat or use of force to solve conflicts established as a ius cogens rule
(hence, mandatory for all)
c) Law of the Civilized Nations. In the 19th century, the idea that many scholars
had of the “law of nations” actually became the law of the “civilized
nations” (i.e., Western Europe). Colonization context: colonizing was
legitimate by the imposition of the law of the civilized nations to uncivilized
ones. For example, treaties on warfare said that the employment of certain
weapons was forbidden between civilized nations but was allowed against
the population or soldiers of the uncivilized ones.
This “law of the civilized nations” has important ramifications as of today:
general principles of law are still based on the imposition of the Western
vision of the world over the rest of the world.
d) Humanitarian law: it regulates certain treatment that all soldiers and peoples
are entitled during war times. This has become a well-developed idea in
international law: there are many treaties that sprung from the notion that
there must be a fair treatment to the population during wartimes, and there
must be limitations to certain weapons or military practices (e.g., biological

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 weapons, use of toxic gases, etc.). International humanitarian law applies to
armed conflicts. It does not regulate whether a State may actually use force;
this is governed by an important, but distinct, part of international law set out
in the United Nations Charter.
Before the existence of the UN, the idea was first introduced at the time of
the creation of the Red Cross during the 19th century under Swiss law,
although today it is considered an international organization (we will discuss
this case further on).
A major part of international humanitarian law is contained in the four
Geneva Conventions of 1949. Nearly every State in the world has agreed to
be bound by them. The Conventions have been developed and supplemented
by two further agreements: the Additional Protocols of 1977 relating to the
protection of victims of armed conflicts. Other agreements prohibit the use
of certain weapons and military tactics and protect certain categories of
people and goods, e.g.: 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.
Humanitarian law is still in development: an example is the political
commitment of the “responsibility to protect”, which consists of the idea that
states or the political community are legitimated to intervene in a state when
it is perpetrating or is unable to avoid the perpetration of certain
humanitarian crimes against its population.
- Legal concepts: Territorial and political sovereignty.
The planet is split into different territories which are under the sovereignty of
each state.
Some authors consider that the sovereignty of a state has two dimensions:
a) Internal sovereignty refers to the international rights and duties of a State
that pertain to its ultimate authority and competence over all people and
all things within its territory, and in particular to the correlated principles
of territorial and personal jurisdiction and integrity, and of
non-intervention.
b) External sovereignty pertains to the international equal rights and duties
of a State in its relations to other States, and in particular to its original
legal personality and the correlated principle of State and state agents’
immunity.
International sovereignty needs to be recognized; otherwise, it does not follow a
logical display under international relations (example of Kosovo not being
recognized by Spain, which creates uncertainties under international law).
Implications of sovereignty:
a) Territorial sovereignty: within this territory, states can display their political
authority to the extent of the laws that must be followed, the legitimate use
of force by the states’ Armed Forces, etc.
Idea of sovereignty: there is one central authority monopolising the use of
force, allocating the resources and maintaining the unity of the state.
b) Also, states have the capacity to create and assume legal obligations:
creating international rights and duties of the parties. Along with obligations
comes international responsibility: in the case of not complying with
obligations, states will engage their international responsibility and hence
will be subject to making reparations.

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2. International society structure and International Organizations
- As explained before, there exists a political idea that there are some ideas that tie
the global community, like humanitarian law or the idea of ius cogens law.
- International obligations are created through time and the establishment of
custom:
a) The main subject matter of classical international law was based on the
problems that the creation of international obligations presented. IOs are not
so much about the creation of obligations but rather on why states cooperate:
states do not have a legal obligation to do so, but they do: Why? Maybe for
political reasons or in order to achieve certain goals that they cannot achieve
by themselves.
b) The art. 38 of the ICJ statute provides the system of sources of international
obligations: treaties, custom, general principles of law, judicial decisions and
the interpretation of the qualified doctrine.
Note that each of these sources are state-related. Examples:
i. States create treaties: at least traditionally, although there is a Vienna
Convention on the Law of Treaties between States and International
Organizations or between International Organizations (1986), but this
treaty is not enforced because it has not been ratified by enough
parties, so that we still do not have a rule to know how IOs create
international law.
ii. As for international custom, quite the same: this is beginning to
change due to the relevance of IOs today in the international arena,
but for most of time (and still predominantly today) international
customary law stems from states’ conduct.
Then, so far IOs do not have a great saying in legal obligations: probably
they will in the future, but the creation of international obligations is still a
state-centred decision-making process.
c) As for moral obligations (ideological and political), they again rely on states.
States are the starting point and the end of all obligations, regardless of their
nature (legal or moral).
- Subjects
a) Societies of states. States that relate culturally tend to form a “society”. We
do not expect states with different visions of the world, states that have
controversies or even states who do not recognize each other to form a
society; but we can expect it from states which have a common
understanding of the world and common goals.
i. Basic paradigm: states claim to represent a sovereign opinion based
on some sort of democratic principle underneath the international
society, which combined with the principle of equal sovereignty of
states acts as a guarantee for the state to be able to portray the
opinion of their population to the international arena.
This is not clear when states do not follow democratic principles,
because there are no mechanisms to guarantee that they are
portraying the opinion of their population. However, the same

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 reciprocity principles are awarded to them when they are recognized
as sovereign, regardless of whether they are democratic or not.
Indeed, there are many non-democratic states which are sovereignly
recognized and hence are treated equally under international law.
ii. States act under the umbrella of the UN, which enjoys almost
universal memberships. They could willingly leave the UN, but if
they did they would still be subject to some legal and moral
obligations (erga omnes obligations based on ius cogens norms).
b) IOs are created by states: not by individuals or other private entities. IOs are
welcomed into the international society precisely because this is the will of
states, following the criteria of a foundational treaty, permanence and a
recognition of independent autonomy.

3. International society fragmentation

- The international society is fragmented into “international regimes”: a regime is
a system of cooperation that includes material norms and institutions. As states
have a territory over which they have the capacity to display their authority,
international regimes can exert influence over these territories to the extent that
states have consented.
a) Collective regulation over international matters: specific rules agreed upon
all the subjects of the regime. This system of rules must specify the limits of
what states can do, the obligations of states, the novelties of the regime, etc.
Regimes are composed by norms and institutions.
b) One important characteristic of international regimes is fragmentation:
regimes are very specialized, following specific subject matters disregarding
any general obligation. As opposed to domestic law, where an introduction
of a legal reform has an impact on other matters, in international law this
does not happen: international norms are very specialized, therefore they
only apply to the particular subject matter.
Then, at a point you can find a contradiction between the regulation of an
international regime and another regime. Example: The Red Cross blood
donor bus started to pollute a lot, contradicting the ideas of environmental
sustainability which are very relevant for international law.
c) Some international regimes have developed very deeply, with a deep
regulation and institutions developing even more norms, judgments, etc.
They can be stretched so much that they are basically self-contained: then,
are we still speaking about international law? There are so many specificities
and ways to develop the regime that even though one spends years studying
PIL one will not be an expert on that regime.
In addition, there are no general rules that affect those regimes: each is a
case of their ones. Some authors say that this can be solved by classical legal
techniques of speciality or chronology, in order to avoid contradictions.
d) These regimes are basically created by IOs and this is where the creation of
IOs really makes sense.
Examples or regimes: the WTO, humanitarian law, diplomatic law…
- Fragmentation and IGOs

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 a) The UN is considered universal not only by its membership but also by their
goals or types of issues that it covers. However, most IOs are very specific.
b) Creation of standards: IOs create new rules for their member-states. They
also promote the establishment of certain regimes in order to further develop
international law.
c) Also, some IOs have the capacity to judge and allocate responsibility. They
create jurisprudence that states often decide to follow. In the event of new
issues (e.g., technological change) IOs respond to those novelties for states
to follow.

4. IOs and subjects of International Law

- Subjectivity and legal personality
a) IOs are “next to the states” under international law and they are
responsible for the expansion of the subjects of IL. (we will see again the
subjectivity of IOs in future lessons).
b) Subjectivity and legal personality. There are some factual criteria to
know whether an international entity is an IO:
i. International treaty creating it.
ii. Organs created by the treaty, different from the ones that the
states.
iii. Autonomy: organs can act independently from the states.
c) Considering a legal approach, the international legal personality can be
“domestic” and “external”.
i. Domestic: its recognition as a legal personality by the founding
states. Example: article 104 of the UN Charter empowers the UN
to operate within member-states: “The Organization shall enjoy
in the territory of each of its Members such legal capacity as may
be necessary for the exercise of its functions and the fulfilment of
its purposes”.
ii. External: recognition of the rights and duties of the IO by third
parties (other states or other IOs). This is the most problematic: it
is not always enough to claim international legal personality in
the treaty for an IO to have its legal personality recognized by the
whole international community. According to customs and
general principles of law, states do not have a capacity to create
obligations for third parties, so that no matter the foundational
treaty, or how some states should recognize the international
organization, there is still a decision to be made by third parties
on the matter.
Example: the UK is not granting a representative of the EU with
a rank of ambassador, meaning that it is not recognizing the EU
as an IO with legal personality of its own, but rather it simply
recognizes the sovereignty of each of the states that conform the
EU. The UK has recognized some IOs as “Committees” with
whom it established friendly relations.
- Purpose of IGOs

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 a) IOs are created based on some goals and objectives. This does not allow
us to identify them although, since it is not distinctive of IOs: all kinds of
associations share certain goals.
b) IOs have been created based on the functionality principle: they are
endowed by a specific purpose. This is a factual matter that must be
considered in order to understand their role.
- IOs and subjects.
a) IOs are creating more sources, more rules and also enhancing the
existence of more international subjects, with qualified legal personality:
b) In addition, other actors are being able to intervene more directly in IL
thanks to IOs:
i. Individuals. Under classical IL, individuals could not bring a
claim against their own state when it disregards their rights.
Today, the ECHR under the Council of Europe allows individuals
to bring claims against their own states.
This is very relevant because when individuals were mistreated in
foreign countries they could ask for diplomatic protection in their
home states, but before this there was no solution if the
perpetrator was their own state.
ii. NGOs. The Inter-American Court of HR launches a petition to
the civil society, universities, NGOs, etc. to provide their opinion
for a particular matter that is important for them to use in court.
NGOs can also be invited to different debates to further develop
IL.
iii. Corporations. The International Civil Aviation Organization
brings technological development that corporations can
incorporate. In addition, corporations have an important saying
on setting certain international standards.
iv. Civil society: trade unions have a great saying in setting the
standards of international labour regulations.

5. Globalization and International Organizations

Esta introducción es de un texto de los obligatorios:
- The proliferation of international organizations in recent years is directly related
with the concept of globalization, which has begun to shape the debate on
international politics. While traditional scholars viewed sovereign states as the
central institution of international relations, some scholars argue that the process
of globalization is displacing the role of states, as they have begun to lose
autonomy in the central locus of decision-making in international relations as a
direct consequence of globalization.
- Before further analyzing this debate, we should define the concepts of
sovereignty and globalization:
a) Sovereignty can be defined in reference to its internal and external
dimension: on the one hand, internal sovereignty refers to the ability of
an state to make and enforce its own rules domestically; on the other
hand, external sovereignty refers to the recognition of the state by other

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 states, in other other words, the acceptance of the state by the
international community.
The sovereign state system is considered to have become the central
organizing feature of international relations since 1648, when the Peace
of Westphalia signified the diminishing political power of the nobility in
favour of the sovereign ruler (mainly prices). However, during the 19th
there was a fundamental change in the concept of sovereignty, as the
ruler became to be recognized as a representative of the population
guarantor of their interests: the citizen became sovereign. This change of
mindset explains the increase in cooperation between states in order to
maximize the welfare of their citizens, which helps to explain the genesis
of intergovernmental cooperation through IOs in the nineteenth century.
b) Globalization. This cooperation and the increased prevalence of IOs has
raised the question on whether this process is undermining sovereignty.
The “globalization approach” consists of the observation of a set of
transnational forces limiting the ability of states to make independent
policy decisions, which has to effects: first, the tendency to act
multilaterally and second, to mold policy to fit the indicates of
international economic forces. Example of combination of the two
effects: the WTO.
Globalization can undermine external and internal sovereignty by
loosening the monopoly of states in international politics, although to
varying degrees (e.g.: the US having a bigger say in the making and
changing of the WTO compared to for instance Singapore); in addition,
globalization authors argue that the emergence of IOs has increased the
scope of other actors such as NGOs and TNCs, due to being able to
avoid the more rigid national regulations. As a result, there are
arguments both in favour of globalization (e.g.: human rights and
environmental activists) and against it (e.g.: critics of trade and economic
interests governing politics).
Estas tres teorías las explicó muy brevemente en clase y os la integro con cosas del
texto:
There are three ways in which we can approach the last 30 years of IL:
- Realism:
a) They view states in a situation of anarchy, with little constraint except for
their own power, which is actually the ultimate arbiter of outcomes in
international relations: outcomes can be expected in favour of those which
are most powerful.
b) According to realists,states are the actors with most power because they have
three competences that no other actor has: they control most of the military
power, they have the ability to tax and they are the issuers of the world's
currencies.

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 c) Since IOs depend on states to enforce their rules, to fund them and have no
territory, their success depends on being backed by powerful states. They
claim that in fact, the only subjects of international society are states. Then,
IOs are the “long arm” of the interests of the states.
Powerful states (hegemons) use IOs in order to lock down their international
politics. It is easy for states to join an IO, but very hard to leave. For
instance, the BW trio are the extension of the US interests: keeping the
system sustainable, regulating the countries’ conduct within a common
framework, etc. Also, the EU is an expression of interest of the US, too,
created under the CW as a means for communists not to establish themselves
into the West.
d) Conclusion: both external and internal sovereignty is unaffected by
globalization because states remain the locus of power in the international
system. If anything, weaker states lack some autonom in the face of some
IOs, but they were also subject to the same more powerful states that are
behind those IOs
- Internationalism
a) The international approach comes from a perspective of international law
rather than power politics. Accordingly, it sees states as analogous to citizens
in the domestic societies: while the domestic society is sustained because
they follow most of their rules most of the time, internationalists argue that
states follow most international law most of the time.
At any point in time, there are certain generally accepted rules of conduct
that states follow not necessarily out of altruism, but because they recognize
that they all benefit from a society that is rule-governed and are willing to
abide by those rules as long as they bind others as well. From this
perspective, the role of IOs is to regulate the relations among states.
b) States do share political power with IOs: states can still be more relevant, but
they use IOs based on the principle of specialisation in order to develop
international law and cooperation. Still, IOs are independent, more than the
strong-arm of the state.
c) Conclusion: internationalists agree that globalization is eroding internal
sovereignty, as states are increasingly bound to follow collective rules;
however, they agree with realists that externally, the sovereign state system
remains stronger: rules are made by states collectively, but they are still
being made by states.
- Universalism:
a) Due to globalization, states are less able to tackle issues on their own: global
climate change, pandemics, natural disasters, mobilities, etc. New
transnational challenges are not suitable to be tacked by states alone. Then,
states yield more power to IOs, so that the sovereignty of the states is limited
in favour of the decision-making placed on IOs.
b) Important difference with the other two: it is not state-centric; universalists
see states as increasingly irrelevant in the face of a developing global
society, a society of people rather than states. They agree with
internationalists that the international society works due to the will to abide
by those rules, but it is not states but the civil society who consent to this

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 process. Accordingly, IOs are more important as expressions of, and creators
of, global civil society than they are as regulators or relations among states.
c) Conclusion: globalization is in fact undermining sovereignty. It undermines
internal sovereignty to the extent that IOs increasingly make rules that reflect
a global civil society, so that states lack the autonomy to make rules
domestically that are incongruent with international norms. It also
undermines external sovereignty to the extent that other actors as IOs and
NGOs begin to replace states as the legitimate representatives of the global
citizenry.

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LESSON 2: International organizations: Origins and evolution.

1. Intellectual history.

The history of IOs has been mainly developed during the last two centuries,
being significantly marked by the creation of the League of Nations, which meant a turn
from low political issues (this is, cooperation in technical aspects such as regulation of
transboundary rivers) to cooperation regarding high political matters.

Similarly, history of IOs has been linked to the dichotomy of whether the
international society is sustained on coexistence or cooperation. This is, different IR
theories consider states to be self-interested, only concerned about maximizing their
outcomes and minimizing their losses; on the other hand, other theories believe that
states are altruistic and willing to fulfil big ideals, needing each other in order to do so.
History has proven that states do cooperate beyond their international legal obligations,
simply because they want to. But why do states cooperate then? There are many
theories trying to answer this question: (the first three were created during the first half
of the 20th century, and the last three correspond to the second half)

- Idealism → It believes that states are altruistic and willing to sacrifice their gains
to achieve a greater common good for humanity. This perspective stems from
the Enlightenment and the Romantic ideas of the 19th century. According to
some academics, this view can be spotted in Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen
Points” statement to put an end to WWI.

- Realism → When the WWII arrived, many members from the LoN withdrew
from it, putting aside cooperation to engage in war, solely pursuing their own
interests. This behavior reinforced the Realist school, which believes that states
are the primary actors in an international arena that is characterized by anarchy
-due to the lack of a higher authority or central enforcement- and that they
rationally choose the most appropriate actions to increase their own power in a
constant clash between each other. Thus, Realism presents international relations
as a zero-sum game where the gains of one state necessarily constitute the losses
of another. As a result, this view predicts that states will refuse to cooperate if
they cannot directly benefit from it and will instead resort to war.

- Liberal internationalism → Also considered as conservative internationalism, it

is based on the belief that the core values of Western democracies -such as the
rule of law, human rights, constitutionalism etc.- are to be spread around the
world. Therefore, Western powers are entitled to export these theories to other
nations which were not considered able to rule themselves and impose their
values upon them with the ultimate objective of achieving world peace.

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 - Neorealism → After WWII, states were not able to pursue their own interests
individually because of the Cold War. Therefore, realism was reformulated
building on the work of scholars such as Waltz. His theory claims that all the
interactions in the international arena ultimately refer to the relations between
the hegemons, which at the time were the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In the
same way, the creation of IOs also stems from the same confronting relationship,
as they are a tool for the hegemons to sustain their power.

- Liberal Institutionalism → It emerged as a criticism of Neorealism thanks to the

work of authors such as Doyle, who explained that “democratic peace” would be
not achieved by an hegemonic oversee but instead through the spread of liberal
values. However, contrary to liberal internationalism, the supporters of this
theory believe that the international rule of law can be better sustained by IOs, as
they serve as a platform to spread democratic principles, and respect
non-self-governing territories. Moreover, this theory states that domestic and
international institutions do play central roles in facilitating cooperation and
peace between states.

- Social constructivism/postmodernism → It was formulated after the fall of

communism and the end of the bipolar world. Its core idea is that actors in
international affairs are socialized and influenced by their surroundings, and
therefore their proclivity towards conflict or cooperation is collectively
constructed. In short, this theory does not provide a single answer or axiom to
explain international relations: states are not purely self-interested nor altruistic;
since the decision to cooperate depends on the different circumstances of each
state. As a matter of illustration, this theory explains that trust fosters
cooperation, as well as cultural proximity. Thus, the US will be more likely to
cooperate with those states with which it shares more values and who have not
presented a hostile behavior towards it. Moreover, constructivism disputes the
realist assumptions of state-centrism and highlights the importance of other
actors such as individuals in the international arena.

2. First organizations.

In the 19th century several IOs were created by states to foster technical
cooperation, this is, low-politics cooperation. The first ones were those concerned with
River Navigation Management (Rhin, Douro, Danube) and regulated how to navigate
the river, permits, ships, trade and shipment, etc.

As more technology was being developed and the world was becoming
increasingly more connected, other IOs appeared such as the International Telegraphic
Union (1865), the International Postal Union (1874), the International Metric Union

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(1875; which set an international metric unit), the International Copyright Union (1886),
the International Union of Railway (1890; concerned with the separation of rails for
transborder trains, ensuring that all manufacturers were aligned) and the International
Office of Public Health (1903; which fought against the most common diseases back in
the day).

3. International organizations in the twentieth century.

In the 20th century IOs acquired greater international capacity, obtaining

international legal personality and the attributed powers that come with it. This is, the
trend towards internationalism led the international society to accept that IOs have
certain capacities which do not necessarily need to be included in their constituent
treaty. For instance, they enjoy treaty-making capacity even if this is not stated in the
founding charter. Furthermore, since the 20th century IOs are gaining greater
international weight. As a result, they enjoy normative effectiveness which means that
they have the capacity to set standards which are followed by its member states. They
are able to make states engage in cooperation to fulfil its purposes and they set the goals
for future international relations. In fact, even those IOs whose resolutions are not
binding enjoy effectiveness, as states tend to abide by their standards. In short, IOs have
proved to be very effective agents, allowing states to pursue their cooperative goals.

In line with this greater power, the IOs that were created in the 20th were no
longer concerned with mere technical issues, but instead they were designed to attain
high-politics cooperation:

The first IOs of this type were the League of Nations (LoN) and the
International Labor Organization (ILO), both created in 1919 through annexes to the
Treaty of Versaille. On the one hand, the ILO seeked to improve the situation of workers
from the signing parties, although its true purpose was to halt the spreading of a
communist sentiment, which was rising after the Russian Revolution. Therefore, the
ILO created a third way between the straightforward liberalism that endangered the
lives of workers during the industrialization and communism. Its objective was to
preserve the values of Western democracies and, in fact, its creation did prevent many
left-wing European parties from joining the Russian communist party. For instance,
Spanish PSOE sent Fernando de los Ríos as a representative to Moscow. There, he
opposed Lenin's views defending individual freedom. In short, the idea behind the
creation of the ILO was that improving the labor conditions of workers would
ultimately protect the democratic system. On the other hand, the creation of the LoN
enhanced a more global view of international politics. Although it failed, its ending after
WWI gave place to the creation of other IOs, most importantly:

- UN, 1945 – Bretton Woods 1944-45 → UN is considered to be the

improved heir of the LoN, as it incorporated different mechanisms for

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 supervising states and decision-making. It was accompanied by the
Bretton Woods Trio, this is, the World Bank and IMF (as well as the
GATT, although this was a trade agreement and not a proper IO). These
were created based on the idea that a certain economic system was
needed to be implemented for the new world ahead, which was able to
counter the threat of the communist system.

When Russia became a bigger threat, new IOs were introduced:

- CoE, NATO 1949 → Council of Europe was created to foster democracy

among states. Meanwhile, NATO was based on a military alliance among
the US and Western Europe to attain collective self-defense against the
Warsaw Pact members and its satellites.
- EEC 1957 → European Economic Community, which later evolved into
the European Union.
- OECD 1961 → Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development established to stimulate economic progress and world
trade.
- OSCE 1975 → Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,
created by the Helsinki Agreement regulating arms control, promotion of
HR and liberal values among other issues.
- ICC 2002… → International Criminal Court, created through the Rome
Statute of 1998, which entered into force in 2002. It is the first and only
permanent international court with jurisdiction over individuals for
international crimes of genoice, crimes against humanity, war crimes and
the crime of aggression.

4. League of Nations.

a. Characters and achievements. The maps shown depict the geographic

differences of the world between 1914 vs 1918. In that period, three empires
disappeared: the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires. In addition,
Germany also lost part of its territory after WWI. And these territories were divided into
many different European states.
Similarly, the European powers had already colonized all of Africa, Southern
Asia and Australia before the conflict. After the Great War, the former empires and
Germany lost their colonies and those territories fell under the control of LoN
representatives: mainly the UK and France, but also Italy, which dominated most of the
African colonies and those in the Arabic Peninsula). The world significantly changed.

14
The LoN was created through an Annex to the Treaty of Versailles, signed among
Germany and WWI winners to set the reparations and surrendering conditions of
Germany. Moreover, the ILO was also created through another Annex.

The organs that composed the LoN were the Assembly, the Council, the Secretariat, and
the Permanent Court; which were later replicated by the UN. Furthermore, it was also
formed by technical commissions regarding different areas such as health,
communications, transports, trafficking of women and children, slavery, disarmament,
etc.

Its major achievements were the creation of the Permanent Court of International
Justice, whose rulings are still considered valid nowadays by academics and the ICJ;
and its efforts concerning Peace-Keeping, Human Rights and Minority protection, and
its Mandate system.

b Peace-keeping.

It focuses on impunity prevention. During the 1920s, Turkey committed a massive

genocide against the Armenian population and, although it could be regarded by the
international community as interfering with national affairs (which is conflictive with
the peremptory norms of IL), the LoN (mainly France and the UK) condemned it and
intervened, claiming that such violation against human rights could not be accepted.

However, the founding states of the LoN had already tried to fight against impunity
before. As such, article 227 of the Treaty of Versailles was intended to try Kaiser
William II for his crimes during the War based on ius cogens norms. Nevertheless, he
was considered to enjoy immunity for his status as Chief of State and, therefore, he was
never judged.

In the same way, the Peace-Keeping efforts of the LoN were translated into war
prevention. As such, its foundational treaty contemplated that whenever there was a
break of hostilities it would be in the interest of the whole League to intervene (art. 11),
this was a call for cooperation. In addition, articles 12 to 16 regulated an Arbitration
system as a method for peaceful settlement of disputes. Thus, before entering into war,
states were obliged to engage into arbitration. Nevertheless, this mechanism never

15
succeeded as belligerent interests were very powerful at the time. Consequently,
European states progressively withdrew from the LoN and arbitration was not applied to
the escalating conflict regarding Germany.

Other efforts for peace maintenance were the Treaty of Locarno (1925) which regulated
the demilitarization of the Rhin; and the Briand-Kellogg pact (1928) which consisted on
several multilateral treaties signed by Germany and France that praised for not resorting
to war as political commitment for those states. In fact, this pact was mentioned during
the Nuremberg Trials, when the Nazi leaders were indicted due to wrongful acts against
peace treaties

c. Human rights and minority protection.

The LoN was compromised with the protection of Human Rights and, especially, those
of minorities. Therefore, many agreements defending civil and political rights were
signed under its umbrella, such as the White slave trafficking Convention (1921), the
Children's rights declaration (1924), the Convention on Slavery (1926), the High
Commissioner for Refugees (1921) and the High Commissioner for Refugees coming
from Germany (1933) which protected the jewish population. These demonstrate that
rights shall not be taken for granted, since humanity has faced their violation before.
Instead, there must be a continuous effort by the International Society to spread and
maintain the international rule of law.

Moreover, the League also enshrined economic, social and cultural rights, and within
this context the Constitutions of Querétaro (1917) and Weimar (1921) reflected
numerous social rights advances (limitation of working hours, prohibition of children’s
exploitation, etc.). Similarly, it was accompanied by the ILO, which believed that
universal peace is grounded on social justice and, as such, its regulations were needed to
prevent the spread of communism which could undermine democratic systems.

On a different note, Minority protection, despite its good-natured purpose, ultimately

caused the failure of the LoN. The restructuring of European borders after WWI caused
outstanding migration movements and the emergence of new states, which involved a
wide variety of minorities. Therefore, the political tension between the dominant
cultural identities and the minorities of each state entailed a significant threat for the
maintenance of peace and stability in the region. In response, the LoN developed a
minority protection system composed of “Minority treaties” (mostly concerned with
Central and Eastern European countries) which allowed control over domestic
regulation to protect minority rights. However, not all states shared the same submissive
attitude towards these regulations, and since the 1930s Eastern European states began to
leave the League. This system obliged treaties to include minimum standards
concerning individual rights (such as the right to nationality, life, freedom, religion,

16
education, etc) and created a procedure through which any member-state could bring
one of the minority treaties’ signatory before the PCIJ, creating international liabilities.
Similarly, the Court was empowered to exercise an advisory function with regard to
minority issues. Moreover, on the domestic sphere, states were forced to elevate the
treaty provisions to the status of constitutional law, which could only be modified by the
Council of the LoN. The main factor that triggered the failure of the minority protection
system was the “politicization” of the regime, which referred to the disloyal behavior of
the states either by avoiding their obligations or by using them in favor of their foreign
policy and not for the interest of minorities. In addition, it lacked general applicability
since it did not impose the same obligations for Westernd and Central and Eastern
European countries, therefore not becoming a fundamental principle of International
Law.

d. Mandate system

It allowed members of the LoN to take control over the former colonies of Germany
(through the Treaty of Versailles) and the Ottoman Empire (Treaty of Sèvres, although it
was never ratified as it contained some attributions for the Armenian population that no
state wanted to abide by; therefore it was substituted by the Treaty of Lausanne, which
disregarded the Armenians).

This system was established through article 22 of the LoN Covenant and imposed that
those territories could not be annexed by the mandatory, and that the mandatory had the
obligation to seek for development of territory. It was based on the belief that those
territories could not manage themselves, and therefore it was their best interest to be
kept by the LoN. The UN replicated this mandate system by creating the UN
Trusteeship Council, which controlled the territories itself instead of other states.
However, it suspended its functions in 1994 after the independence of Palau.

17
LESSON 3: PROLIFERATION AND FEATURES OF INTERNATIONAL
ORGANIZATIONS
1. Proliferation.
2. Definition and elements. Classification.
3. International organizations, international corporations, non-governmental organizations,
international civil society.
4. Power and law. Governance.
5. National sovereignty and International organizations.

1. PROLIFERATION.
Proliferation has brought more subjects and topics to be regulated by IL. This proliferation has
also entailed the transformation of IL from mechanisms of coexistence to mechanisms of
cooperation, as topics like transportation and communication have been left in the background
for the introduction of more political matters. But it has consequences.

A) STRENGTHS.
∙ Expansion of International Rule of Law.
IOs are developing international cooperation, so the broader this is, the bigger the scope of
International Rule of Law is regarding how states cooperate and to fill the gaps. The fact that are
IOs the ones covering this topics means that there is a sense of regulation. So, there is a
bottom-up perspective were states want to participate in the international arena through IOs.
∙ Regimes of cooperation.
Wherever IOs are, they are creating or strengthening regimes of cooperation more sophisticated.
So it is the idea that a regime of cooperation is a set of international treaties and norms backed
up by an institution, which may settle courts, methods to solve controversies, etc. and create
even more cooperation through that.
∙ Global administration.
We could claim that the fact that there are so many IOs and proliferation is a important issue
nowadays is because they are creating brick by brick, individually and in a fragmented way a
global administration, shaping individuals day to day life. As a matter of fact, as individuals few
do we know about where rules are coming from, we just know that these rules are created and
provided by us. It is very difficult to know if they come from a multilateral treaty of from a
bilateral agreement. IOs are fostering a global executive power.

B) WEAKNESSES.
• Incoherence among IGOs outcomes.
IOs are normally not part of another IOs, because in general, members of IOs are states and not
other IO. This means that if there are incoherencies among states, among regimes, we also have
incoherence among the outcomes of IOs. For example, the case of states belonging to the EU
are also members of the Council of Europe, which was the creator of the European Court of
Human Rights. In the ECHR, whenever there is a ruling against one state, the rest of the state

18
members of the EC takes notes to avoid similar situations in the future. On the contrary, the EU
has not particularly developed regulation on HHRR. The newly Fundamental Rights Charter
was created in 2006. And the EU also has a court, where similar cases can be referred. The
incoherence come when a ruling of the ECHR, all EU member states are deemed to follow it but
the EU is not. So, the EU can foster a ruling contradicting the one from the CE, and the member
states have to follow that ruling too.
• Democratic deficit.
When it comes to the activities and the power of IOs. In a state, there are lawyers, presidents,
judges… But in IOs, states have just entrusted them to create new standards, and those
standards are going to be enforced it in the member states as it is an international obligation
(higher in the scale than national law). Therefore, the idea that a judge is claiming against the
regulation of an IO is not foreseeable. But that standard or specific regulation is not backed up
by the population of the country. So this idea that the activities of IOs can not be accounted for
is very problematic. And the more proliferation there is, the stronger the democratic deficit is.
For instance, in the EU’s regulation has been tried to be accounted for by the creation of the
European Parliament. But in other IOs such as NATO there is not that control.

2. DEFINITION AND ELEMENTS. CLASSIFICATION.

An International Organization is, in a basic and broad definition, a subject of IL compounded by
member states and seek a public good. They have agency, this is the capacity to express its own
will and its own interests, and not the long arm of states. However, it has been proved
impossible to give a comprehensive definition of what and IO is. It is a highly fluid concept.

A) SUBJECTIVITY.
• Being created between states. There is no maximum of states if it is not a regional
organization. The minimum of states is two (like the CARU).
• On the basis of an international treaty, which is define by IL in general terms as a
written agreement, governed by IL.
• Having permanent organs.
• Having an independent will.

B) CRITIQUES TO SUBJECTIVITY.
• Controversial subjectivity.
Some IOs do not have this aforementioned characteristics.
The idea of being created between states is not that solid. IOs sometimes involve actors other
than states, like other IOs (EU member of the FAO). Also, it is important to remember that not
everything created by states are IOs. Moreover, sometimes treaties are to be implemented by the
so-called treaty organs, like the European Court of Human Rights, which is not an IO.
The idea of being created by an international treaty among states is not the case of the Red
Cross, for example. That is basically a non-profit IOs created under Swiss Law, but it gained
international subjectivity through years. Also, the IO can be created by the legal act of an
already existing organization (UNICEF was created by a resolution of the General Assembly

19
and then joint by states). So being created by an international treaty is not and ultimate
condition.
The idea of having permanent organs is quite thin too as we do not know what a permanent
organ is or what it is supposed to do. For instance, there are examples where there is a
permanent organ created by an international treaty such as the ICC, which is an IOs. But on the
other hand, the Arms Trade Treaty is an international treaty which has created a secretariat,
which is in charge of receiving reports and making sure everything works all right. But this
secretariat is not considered an international organization or a permanent organ. Other problem
would be a considered permanent organ that only meet once a year. So, there is a very thin line
between what is a working organization and what it is not.
The idea of having an independent will is very controversial. For instance, the League of
Nations had a decision-making process of unanimity of all the members, so can we see
decisions had an autonomous will? It does not seem so. And how IOs can have an independent
will if the member states are the ones founding them? IOs are created with a goal, can be
independent from that goal? How independent can be the EU from the majorities of the CE?
How independent is the Security Council from the US?
• Third party recognition.
The subjectivity is not something spontaneous, it needs to be recognised by third parties. Like
states, IOs need to have recognition from the rest of the international community or most of it..
To what extent states that do not belong to a treaty can recognised and have to recognise the
treaty? But IOs no matter how strong they are, they need it. The role of third parties recognition
can really change the perception of an IO. For instance, there are some IOs that are not passing
the subjectivity test but are recognised as such. For example, the International Organization for
Standardization, which is Switzerland based.
• Functionality vs. Principal-Agent theory.
The functionality principle is every IO have a function, and it defines the IO. And member
states have created the IOs and given the function. So, the IO has been implicitly given more
powers in order to be able to achieve that objective. For example, when the UN were created,
the constituent treaty forgot to attribute the IO international legal personality. But it was
recognised by the ICJ in a ruling in 1949, where the court claim that for the UN to achieve its
function it needed implicitly to exercise its own international legal personality. It is an abstract
power. This is very typical in liberalism-based institutions, not for realist on the other hand.
For realist, to talk about the functionality of IOs it is no sense to talk about their independent
will as it does not exist. What really matters is a principal-agent approach. A much more precise
power. Which means that the principal is the states, and the agent the IOs, this is, the IOs is
mandated with clear cut tasks and what is not inside those acts is not legal as it would be an
overextension of the IO’s power.
For example, if you hired someone to decorate the room the functionality principle (like a blank
check) would say the person hired have to bring ideas and you can love them or not or whatever.
But the principle-agent theory would hire the person to paint the wall baby blue. If the mandate
is not accomplished, the goal has not been achieved and the responsibility will fall to the agent,
the person, the IO. It all depends on the intellectual approach.

C) CLASSIFICATION.

20
Many types: regarding the scope, whether they are regional/universal, working on
HHRR/economics…
Classification may be good in order to organise our knowledge, but each IO is unique. Some of
the most common classifications are:
- Functions. Economy, security and peace, public health, military alliances,
communications… But the definition of each field is essential, as some authors would
consider communications within the economic sphere, for example.
- Membership. Universal or near universal / Limited membership. organizations. This
limitation is not always based on considerations of geography, which is a regional
organization, like the EU. It can also be limited by economic aspects for example, like
the OPEC.
- Political v. Technical (or functional). Technical functions don not involve a great
political sentiment, so cooperation tend to be more easily achieved as decisions do not
depend on politics. It is no coincidence that organizations first arose in order to manage
practical problems such as transport and communication. By “political”, we refer to
issues of peace and security for example. But there is a thin line between what someone
would consider functional and other would consider political, so it cannot be used as a
comprehensive distinction.
- Intergovernmental v. Supranational. There is only one organization which is usually
held to be supranational in character: the EU. The EU takes decisions by majority vote,
so a member that has opposed will have to adopt it, and they will be directly effective in
the legal systems of the member states. So, the EU stands above its members, it is
supranational. Furthermore, some would claim the application of the doctrine of
pre-emption, which goes beyond the concept that states can be overruled by saying that
their action is not longer acceptable in some areas.

3.INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, INTERNATIONAL CORPORATIONS,

NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS, INTERNATIONAL CIVIL SOCIETY.
IOs are easily confused from a first intuition with international actors. The idea of IOs being
different from international corporations, non-governmental organizations and the international
civil society is fundamental. Depending on the nature of the body of law governing the activities
of the organization we can differentiate between the ones governed by:
- (public) international law, this Is a proper IO or at least an intergovernmental
organization.
- some domestic law, which is normally the case of non-governmental organization like
Greenpeace or Amnesty International, although such entities may be international in
character.

ENHANCING INTERNATIONAL PARTICIPATION.

∙ International corporations
International corporations are for-profits entities ruling under domestic law of any of the states it
works, they are non-mandated and they are not created by an international treaty.
Thanks to IOs and the international cooperation they generate, the remaining international
actors’ participation is enhanced by international organizations. States, which are the only

21
sovereign entities in international law, give part of their sovereignty to IOs. And IOs have the
capacity to enhance the capacity of the international community. For instance, there is a number
of ways in which IOs bring international corporations into collaborating withing the public
goals of the IO such as public-private partnership, tenders or procurements, among others.
Public-private partnership. It is a very broad idea in which private corporation (in this case)
works along the public IOs in order to achieve a goal. Therefore, IOs need allies in the private
sphere to achieve their objectives. Example: A credit form World Bank to any given state to
foster development of infrastructures. The state is just not in the capacity to do that, so it is
easier to hire a big company to do it. This is basic procurement. But the idea in public-private
partnership’s procurement is that it does not finish with the construction of the infrastructure,
but the infrastructure is going to be run by both the public and private organizations and both are
going to benefit from it.
∙ Non-governmental organizations.
Non-governmental organizations are non-for-profits and are created by domestic law, and they
consist of a great range of entities from associations to foundations.
IOs establish relationship with them through consultation as the expertise of the
non-governmental organization may help the development of IOs’ activities. Example: The
Inter-American Court of Human Rights has open consultation for non-profit.
Also, non-governmental organizations are the recipients of funding and grants given by IOs. For
example, the UN has a democracy fund that can be given to non-governmental organizations to
protect the rule of law in under-developed progress.
∙ International civil society.
The international civil society is whatever is not the two aforementioned points or an IO, a
broad umbrella for international actors. For example, trade unions, associations of enterprises or
private organizations, etc. They can take part in the consultations, can win tenders, work along
IOs through procurement.
Esto último es del texto BONUS
Global hybrid of public-private bodies: PPPs
Public-Private Partnerships are a hybrid form of international actor which also operate at a
global level. The term PPP is defined in a broad sense, comprising any kind of cooperation
between a public and a private actor.The most emblematic example is the World Anti-Doping
Agency (WADA), but this form has been becoming increasingly more common. For instance,
WADA is a private foundation governed by Swiss domestic law and it has the structure of a
foundation (with a Board, an Executive Committee, a staff made up of professionals, etc.)
Complementarily, it was set up under the initiative of the International Olympic Committee,
with the support and participation of intergovernmental organizations, governments and public
authorities; in addition, it operates internationally and is funded by the Olympic Movement and
by public governments.
In spite of its formally private nature, WADA carries out functions that aim to further public
goals, such as promoting and coordinating the fight against doping at an international level or
reinforcing the ethical principles of fair sports and health. Its most important public role is
setting the international standards that harmonize the anti-doping rules: in this sense, it is
unclear whether this normative function can be defined as elaborating international legal rules,
but at the minimum they produce soft law in the form of recommendations and good practises.

22
Finally, the example of WADA has given rise to certain issues concerning global administrative
governance: whether the model of an equally public-private partnership could be extended to
other fields, how hybrid law-making processes can be an interplay between global institutions
and domestic authorities, since governments take part in both the creation of international law
and the domestic law that governs these institutions and finally, whether this system could be
the solution of the problem of global harmonization of rules and standards. PPPs, in fact, carry
the promise of providing a useful tool not only for delivering services or financing, their
traditional scope, but also for producing norms that can directly affect both national
administrations and private actors. Within this context, the adoption of administrative law-type
principles – both organizational and procedural – seems to offer a suitable coat in order to
confront most of the challenges issued by the development of global private and hybrid
public-private regimes
4. POWER AND LAW. GOVERNANCE.
A) GOVERNANCE VS. GOVERNMENT.
∙ Soft-power vs. hard-power.
In the international level we do not have a government, a central authority which has the power,
the ruling and the capacity to mandate and to sanction. It does not. So, we can only talk about
the idea of governance, which is middle way between the ideas of government and anarchy.
Governance tries to mimic the capacity to implement the rules although there is not hard
power. Governance tries to promote cooperation among the different subjects each one within
their own scope, so we have to talk instead of soft power, because there is not a legal obligation
to follow the mandates but they are followed anyways to achieve effectiveness. For instance, the
UN Security Council adopted a regime of sanctions against North Korea, and the recipients of
that obligations were the members of the UN. So, most states in the world have the obligation to
support the UN sanctions, but many of them do not have that obligation, and that does not mean
that they are not subject to international responsibility. Another example: The EU has
implemented a set of sanctions against Russia along with the US Treasury Department, no
mandate from the US to the EU to implement the sanctions, but diplomacy and the shared goal
was enough for it.
∙ Timely consent vs. Generic consent.

B) GLOBAL EXECUTIVE ADMINISTRATION.

There is a number of ways in which states can get their decisions to citizens:
∙ Inter-governmental administration.
It is based on IOs. Without this administration, when the UN security council, for example,
designated the people to be the recipients of the sanctions, those individuals did not have a way
to claim. So, the idea that there is a global executive administration which aim to grant the
rights of people.
∙ Transnational networks.
They are not IOs, they are meetings of authorities that take decisions. Example: Criteria for
receiving a mortgage for a house in behalf of central bankers.
∙ Hybrid Public-private administration.

23
For instance, the World Antidoping Agency is run privately for the public interest but it has
been commanded by IOs and states to be in charge of their public good.
∙ Private.
Many decisions are made by private entities. The bigger example is the International
Organization for Standardization, which is Swiss based purely private organization. There are
very technical standards for instance that affect many enterprises. These enterprises decide to
adopt them or not, which would entail to be surpassed by the competition.
∙ Distributed.
Any national authority signatory of an international treaty can lead the decision-making process.

C) CONTROL TECHNIQUES.
The national controls can also be applied in the international sphere.
∙ Accountability.
IOs (in this case) need to explain what they do, to be transparent, to act in good faith.
Accountability is the evaluation of the outcomes of their performance. It can be made by the
founders, who are normally the states.
∙ Participation.
Those who are going to be recipients of the standards and regulations of IOs should participate
in their creation.
∙ Review mechanisms.
After any decision made over an individual, those individuals should have the possibility to
challenge it. It can be through a body within the organization, through a court, etc. One
example: Within the Security Council sanctions regime, individuals can challenge the decisions
by asking for a review, asking for a second though.
∙ Transparency and reason giving.

5. NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS.

A) LEGAL SOVEREIGNITY YIELDING .
States may lose willingly part of their sovereignty allowing the IOs to manage that part of the
sovereignty (but states can never lose their sovereignty). This may be controversial as there is a
big debate regarding realism, internationalism and universalism. The idea of universalism is that
IOs can affect directly or indirectly sovereignty of states, this is true till certain extend, as it
cannot be considered that states are not important agents any more. Therefore, we stand for
internationalism.
The constituent treaty of the IO may empower it to take decision that cannot be contested or
challenged by the state. This is more evident in the EU, where states have lost their ability to
coin their own currency and assign a price to it. But this is a reason of opt-in, and they have the
option to opt-out and recover their sovereignty. The constituent treaty must be understood to be
regulated by the Vienna Convention 1969, which provides a number of reasons in which states
may withdraw from the treaty.

24
B) FACTUAL SOVEREIGNITY YIELDING.
According to universalist there is not only a legal, but an factual yielding of sovereignty too.
This happens in two different ways:
- Political influence.
Even if a third party is not member of the treaty or IO, it may lose its capacity to take real
decision or pursue its own interests because of the existent IO. So, third parties are very
influences. Example: Morocco negotiating the water lines with the EU instead Spain.
- Technical influence.
Even though states have the capacity to decide what are the technological requirements for an
industry within its territory, they may out rent the equipment from international markets. If their
own technological or technical requirements do not match those of the IO, they will be found
themselves force to accept them despite not being a member of the IO. For example, the
requirements for aviation.

C) SOVEREINGTY ENHANCING.
IOs are also very useful to enhance the sovereignty of states as they share and assert a common
political position. One example is the African Union and Omar al-Bashir.

25
LESSON 4: Spain and International Organizations

The case of Spain provides a very interesting example of what the relationship between
a state and international organizations can be. Indeed, Spain was the first state to fall
into fascism in the 20th century and the last one to leave it (Francoism dictatorship of
1936-1975). Then, we will see how Spain was initially rendered apart to join the
international organizations that fostered democracy, internationalism, institutionalism
and liberalism.
1. Spain and the League of Nations
- The League of Nations had been constituted in 1919 and during the 1920s Spain
was in a good position within the organization. Spain was economically powerful
because it had remained neutral during the war and had actually benefited from
international trade during it (e.g., selling war material).
- An uprising in 1923 (13-15th September) led to the creation of the authoritarian
regime of Primo de Rivera that contradicted the spirit of other constitutions in
Europe like Weimar and Austria, which did not want to let authorities go as far as it
did in Spain.
- After 1931 the II Republic was democratically constituted and King Alfonso XIII
exiled. The result was an alternation of Republican governments of left and right
during the following years.
- Conflict started to arise when the economic situation of the country started to
deteriorate. Also, authoritarianism spread in Europe: Hitler in Germany who left the
League of Nations or Mussolini in Italy. These events led to the rise of a sense of
priority of national interest in European countries..
- The most dramatic event of this era was the Spanish civil war (1936-1939). It
originated by a militarist uprising of a fascist-minded belligerent group.
According to international law, a civil war remains as a domestic affair because
internationally there is only one subject involved (one state). However, there are
important topics with the civil war of our interest:
a) International humanitarian law.
Germany and Italy armies supported Franco’s side with sea and especially aerial
strikes. While sea strikes were already forbidden by international humanitarian
law, there was a legal gap in the aerial strike.
The most famous example of an aerial strike during the Spanish Civil War took
place in Gernika (1936), but there were also other important strikes in Málaga
and Barcelona. Aerial strikes are actually more dramatic than any other form of
strike: they did not differentiate civilians from soldiers and caused a lot of deaths
of men, women and children. This caught the attention of the international
community, whose most advanced instrument of humanitarian law was a treaty
against bombing from balloons but not aerial plains; then, taking advantage of
this loophole, Germany and Italy bombed from the air. Strictly, the aerial strikes
by the Axis powers were not illegal: they were hurting civilians, which goes
against humanitarian law, but there was not a concrete international legal
instrument that prohibited it.
Finally, the international community sent a strong diplomatic message to Franco
and he ordered to stop striking and there were no more aerial strikes since 1938,

26
 but by that time the Francoist side had already benefited greatly from the
German and Italian intervention and the perspective of winning the war was
very high.
b) Non-interference principle
The League of Nations never considered the Spanish Civil War to be an
international threat to peace. The League had its own problems: many countries
leaving it, the minorities treaties (which were an essential part of the raison
d’être of the League) were starting to fail and especially after the crack of 1929,
the deep economic crisis that shook all Europe led to a rise of national priorities
that made international cooperation under the League unsustainable.
As a result, when Italy and Germany aligned with Franco (who had the status of
belligerent), the League did not consider this an international intervention. This
was an unfortunate interpretation because most historians claim that the SCW
was a previous arena of WWII. The Spanish Civil War was never debated within
the League of Nations Assembly nor the international crimes that were
committed by Franco’s government after he won the war in 1939 (e.g.: killing
prisoners, brutal repression on the Republican side). Critics have noted how the
League of Nations observed perhaps too much the non-interference principle,
but this constitutes a lesson learned because now we see how internal conflicts
can be a threat to international peace.
c) As a third important phenomenon, we can highlight that even before the war was
over, the League of nations delegation of Spain (which was based on Geneva)
was unilaterally shut down by Switzerland because they did not recognize
Franco’s government. Every International Organization has some sort of
Headquarters agreements that allows certain rights and powers to the hosting
state, but really Switzerland did not have the power to shut down the Spanish
delegation. However, the fact is that Switzerland unilaterally decided to do this
in spring 1939 and the war was over by the summer. Even though later onn
Switzerland came to recognize Franco’s government, the Spanish delegation of
the League of Nations did not reopen again before the League was dissolved.

2. Spain and the United Nations

- The conditions for membership are established in the art. 4 of the UN Charter:
“1. Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states
which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the
judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations
2. The admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be
effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the
Security Council”.
The conditions of membership in this article were followed by an ICJ Advisory
Opinion in 1948, in which the ICJ ruled that the only requisite needs to come out
from article 4 and not any other consideration.
An important limitation of this definition is that the term “peace-loving” state is not
accurate. We can imagine the intentions of the drafters of the Chart, but we do not
know what it can mean in reality: not to have an army, not to enter conflict… This
term is not very useful due to its ambiguity.

27
- Spain was not a founding member of the UN, but its potential entry was one of the
prime considerations of the Security Council from the beginning.
a) The “Spanish question” was examined by the international community as the
debate on what to do with Franco’s regime. Franco’s regime was isolated by the
international community during the first years after the war: it was an Axis ally
but did not really engage in WWII, as very few soldiers were sent to fight the
Russians. However, Stalin took this as a heavy international offence and vetoed
Spain’s entry in the UN at the beginning as a way to punish Franco’s regime.
b) We can see this state of affairs in the UNGA Res. 39/1946. It finds Spain a
fascist regime conspiracy with Hitler. In sum, this resolution partially blamed
Spain for WWII and then it banned Spain from the UN.
During this meeting, an important question arises: Who is the UN to engage into
such an opinion? The UN is supposed to cover the threats to international peace,
not the internal affairs. For instance, some delegations like the Argentinian
representative said that the UN had no right to intervene, claiming that the
Spanish question exists but is out of the scop
c) Franco’s regime reacted to this veto by elaborating a discourse claiming that
Spain was being attacked by an international conspiracy of Marxist masonry
wanting to intervene in their internal affairs. Accordingly, the first decades of
Francoism determined a complete isolation of Spain from the international
community.
- In 1955, Spain finally entered the IO. The development of the Cold War led to the
US changing their view on the Spanish situation: under the potential risk of the
USSR occupying Spain, the US decided that allying with Spain was in their interest.
The UNGA Res. 386/1955 simply declares the inclusion of Spain and a number of
other countries in the UN, with no mention to the “Spanish question” anymore.

3. Spain and European integration

- With the development of the Francoist regime, Spain started to align with the
Western democracies in some respects but was far away from being a democracy.
As such, it was left out of the Marshall Plan of reconstruction and was never a part
of European integration of military cooperation with NATO until democracy came.
European integration was a challenge for Franco which was never achieved under
his regime.
- The Conditions for membership of EU:
a) Geographical requirements: Spain evidently
b) Political requirements: defined as the “Copenhagen criteria”, which were laid
down at the European Council in Copenhagen in June 1993:
“1. Stable institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and
respect for and protection of minorities
2. a functioning market economy and the capacity to cope with competition and
market forces in the EU
3. the ability to take on and implement effectively the obligations of
membership, including adherence to the aims of political, economic and
monetary union”.
By the 60s, Spain complied with the market economy (contrary to the beginning of
the Francoist regime, when the economy was very intervened), but the key

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 requirements that were missing until the end of Francoism were the respect for
democracy and human rights.
- The Spanish Admission was first asked in 1962. At this time, Spain’s position in the
international community was strong: it had joined the UN and the OECD, and it was
prosperous after liberalizing economically. However, it was rejected by the EU
because it was not only an economic but also a political organization that was
created to avoid another WWII, so that the ultimate obstacle of the Spanish regime
remained its “guilt” on that part, due to Franco having been an ally of the Axis
powers.
- The admission was asked again in 1977, a very important year for Spain. Franco had
died two years ago, and they had joined the Council of Europe (nota: importante lo
de por qué entró en el CoE en el 77, lo explico en el punto 4 pero aquí se podría
reexplicar si cae esta pregunta) and ratified the DUDH (both the social and political
pack and the economic, social and cultural one). By 1985, it was admitted, when
Spain signed the treaty of Portugal.
- Spain joined the ECC, which changed to the EU and since then it has been a
collaborator of all important treaties. Spain also joined the euro and the Schengen
Agreement. The most important treaties that Spain signed after joining the EU
include:
Nota: él puso esa lista de tratados en su ppt pero no explicó de qué iba ninguno; yo os
añadí ahí un poquito de en qué consistió cada uno por si os interesa pero no lo estudiéis
si no os interesa, a vuestro propio criterio :)
a) Single European Act 1986, which set the objective to create a single market
within the European Economic Community by 1992.
b) Maastricht Treaty 1992: foundation treaty of the European Union (formally
known as the Treaty on the European Union).
c) Amsterdam Treaty 1997, which amended the Treaty of Maastricht by providing
the agreement of its member states to transfer more powers from their national
governments to the EU in several areas.
d) Nice Treaty 2002: reform of the institutional structure of the EU in order to
address the expansion towards Eastern European countries.
e) Lisbon Treaty 2009: amending the Treaty of Rome and the Treaty including
structural changes and including the legally binding Charter of Fundamental
Rights.

4. Spain and other international organizations

- Membership. In this website we have all the IOs and its members:
https://www.worldstatesmen.org/International_Organizations.html
- Council of Europe
a) Spain joined the Council of Europe in 1977.
b) The Council of Europe did an important exception with Spain: in principle, the
Council of Europe only allows states to join if they already have a Constitution
protecting Human Rights. In this case, they included Spain before that
happened, which was risky because it could have been the case that the
Constitution of 1978 would not have been approved in the end.
c) After the CoE took this decision, Spain immediately decided to sign many
conventions sponsored by the CoE, which protect human rights (tenéis aquí una

29
 lista si queréis mirar: https://www.coe.int/fr/web/conventions/full-list), including
most importantly the European Convention of Human Rights (the treaty that
created the European Court of Human Rights). By signing and ratifying that
treaty, Spain had locked down its path to democracy: it would be harder to
deviate from these principles. Accordingly, article 10.2 of the Spanish
Constitution indicates that: “The principles relating to the fundamental rights
and liberties recognised by the Constitution shall be interpreted in conformity
with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the international treaties
and agreements thereon ratified by Spain”.
d) In conclusion, although it is true that the Council of Europe took a risk by
admitting Spain before the Constitution was signed, the reason they made this
move was actually to guarantee that Spain committed to the transition to
democracy. This serves as an example of an IO being useful to lock down an
important policy for a country.
- North Atlantic Treaty Organization
a) Organization created by the US and Western European democracies as a military
and political alliance. It was constituted in 1949 in the context of the emerging
Cold War, and the communist side reacting by constituting a military alliance of
their own: the Warsaw Pact.
b) Spain did not integrate into NATO, so it could not have any military aid from
either NATO or Warsaw Pact. In this sense, Spain was left alone militarily in the
international arena.
c) In 1981 the conservative president Calvo Sotelo asked for admission of the
NATO, which was granted by 1982, some months before the Spanish Socialist
Party (PSOE) came into power. PSOE achieving to form a government was a
very significant historical fact not only for Spain but also for the international
community, because it was the first time that a left-wing party governed Spain
since the II Republic; then, this proved that Spain was already an established
democracy, as it had achieved pluralism.
d) During their electoral campaign, the slogan from Spain was: “De entrada, no”,
that is, “In principle, no”; as a leftist party in the opposition, they did not favour
the entry into NATO. Once they entered the government, they organized a
referendum asking to withdraw from NATO, as they had been campaigning
against being in NATO but actually wanted to be under the NATO umbrella
(especially after they came to power). In a way, once Spain was part of the EU,
PSOE ended up campaigning for NATO. The result of the referendum was
“yes”, and Spain has been part of NATO ever since.
- UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO): very special relation
a) We have seen the long path of Spain to join international institutionalism:
international efforts to bring Spain into democracy present into the transition
years. In this sense, joining the CoE, having democratic elections, being
accepted as a member of the EEC and being integrated into NATO are the result
of a common historical process.
b) On the contrary, the relationship of Spain and the UNWTO is different from any
other IO, as it is the one organization that is seated in Madrid. In order to
manage this relationship, they had to sign a Headquarters Agreement:

30
 international treaty that specifies the legal relations among the host state and the
IGO.
Note: this is actually a topic of immunity, which we will revisit further on. The idea
is that whoever is working for the UNWTO is not subject to the Spain jurisdiction
but rather to the jurisdiction of the UNWTO. Relationship: “like a state inside a
state”.
c) In this Headquarters Agreement we find the specificity of the legal relationship
between Spain and the IO.
i. Headquarter, goods, persons and communications inviolability: this part
regulates whether, in which cases or to what extent the Spanish
policemen can get inside the UNWTO to do an arrest, intercept
communications, etc.
ii. Depicts the waiver of immunity. Regulations on whether the individuals
working for UNWTO are exempt from Spanish jurisdiction: paying
taxes, responsibility for their crimes under Spanish law. For instance, the
agreement should address which individuals specifically enjoy immunity.
iii. Distinction among acta iuri imperii/iuri gestionis. Usually, the waiver of
immunity is only extended to the acts that fall under the competences of
the UNWTO: then, it could be possible for the Spanish authorities to
enforce jurisdiction over acts iuri gestionis but not over acts that fall
under the category of iuri imperii.
iv. Nationality discrimination clause: it is possible for a HQ Agreement to
include a provision that if the worker of the IO is a national of the state
where the IO is established, it will not enjoy any of this privilege; in this
case, this would refer to Spanish employees working for the UNWTO.

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PART TWO. INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY.

LESSON 5: Main functions of IOs.

1. Introduction and main functions.
Almost every IO operates by centralizating the cooperation of states and works
independently from them, serving both as a community representative and enforcing
agreements. These are the main functions of IOs:
● Centralization → IOs allow for the centralization of collective activities through
a concrete and stable organizational structure and a supportive administrative
apparatus that facilitate debate and eliminate barriers for negotiating (for
instance, by setting the agenda or presenting a straightforward mechanism, so
that states can foresee what will be the next step in the negotiations). These
increase the efficiency of collective activities and enhance the organization's
ability to affect the understanding, environment, and interests of states, since
states can concentrate on the subject of the discussion and not on formalities.
Thus, it can be said that IOs support state interaction.
Moreover, IOs allow for the creation of reputation, since through their history of
resolutions one can study the behavioural tendency of an actor.
When studying the centralization role of IOs, it is equally important to mention
their constitutionalization capacity which ensures that the rights of minorities are
not disregarded by powerful members. For example, in order to pass a resolution
in the UN Security Council, 9 positive votes out of 15 are required. Therefore,
even if all the superpowers agreed to pass it (5 veto countries), they would still
need the support of less powerful members to do so.
In sum, IOs’ centralization improves the outcomes of substantive operations by
3 means:
• Pooling (World Bank fight against poverty) → efforts are more efficient
if all resources are managed by one central authority. Example: fight
against diseases such as chickenpox by WHO.
• Joint production (CERN, NATO, ESpaceA) → action will be more
efficient if decisions are made by one coordinator rather than many.
• Norm elaboration and coordination (see below) → capacity to create
norms by themselves or enabling states to create them through-them.

● Independence → It refers to the IO’s capacity to make decisions regardless of

the different stances of its forming member states. Thus, IOs tend to adopt
decision-making mechanisms that ensure that influence of states is limited. For
instance, by adopting decisions through a majority system and not by unanimity.
Through their independent work, IOs also support state interaction. For example,
they not only foster negotiations but also encourage states to reach an agreement
by reminding them that once they have initiated these negotiations they are
binded by some sort of political commitment to achieve a conclusion. This was

32
 the case of the UNEP and the agreement regarding Ozone Layer protection.
Similarly, IOs independence means that they can introduce new ideas and raise
concerns that states may have disregarded (this was the case of the WHO
warnings about the COVID-19 pandemic).
Furthermore, IOs’ independence also contributes to obtaining better results in
substantive operations. Firstly, because they are regarded as impartial actors
whose decisions respond to technical reasons. Therefore, they can serve as
Information providers (IAEA), trustees (LoN territories), allocators (WB), and
arbitrators (dispute settlement: facilitates or settles). Thus, it can be said that IOs
perform a sort of “laundering” when operating, since states do not consider their
intervention in the same way as the interference of a foreign state in their
matters. This impartial facade is possible thanks to the IO’s capacity to operate
on its own behalf and not be binded by the decisions of a single state. As a
matter for illustration, it is more likely that a certain community will accept
loans from the IMF rather than money directly coming from a specific country.
Similarly, UN peacekeeping operations are better regarded than if the soldiers
were coming from a specific country.

● Community representative → In the postwar organizational boom many IOs

were believed to serve as a representative embodiment of a community of states.
However, this assumption is rather controversial nowadays. On one hand, many
IOs are built on a conception of shared interests and values. Moreover, IOs also
allow for the expression of community norms and aspirations. For instance,
although the General Assembly lacks the Security Council’s power of action, its
decisions have a substantial impact on international politics since they express
shared values in ways that legitimate or illegitimate state conduct. On the other
hand, it is also true that situating private disputes in terms of “community
interests” brings an heightened level of political and moral pressure to bear on
disputants and potential intervenors. And, furthermore, it could be the case that
the alleged representativeness is not even real. For example, there can be norms
passed by an approval of 51% against 49%.

● Enforcement → Another controversial but substantial role of IOs is that of their

capacity to ensure compliance with international commitments. In some cases,
managerial activities are sufficient. For instance, treaty-ambiguities can be
resolved by dispute resolutions and mediation. Nevertheless, in scenarios where
there are numerous states facing significant informational problems,
enforcement activities have proven to be more effective. This enforcement can
occur in different ways:
- Direct enforcement → These include requirements of national reporting
such as those of the ILO, or the WB capacity to allocate its own funds.
- Undirect enforcement → which is regulated under UN Charter, Chapter
VII. In these cases, IOs play a crucial role as managers of enforcement,
authorizing measures of retaliation and executing their decisions through

33
 the performance of state actors in the name of the IO. For instance, this
method is often used regarding economic sanctions, as well as
peacekeeping operations and the Security Council resolutions.

2. Conflict resolution.
● Conflict resolution within the international arena can be attained by the
intervention of International Courts, which stem from IOs. Just like them,
International Courts are treaty-based, and their foundational charter must specify
their:
• Jurisdiction → either geographically, or personal, or material (field of
action).
• Composition → members, judges, arbitrators; and their election
process.
• Legal effect → binding capacity or not, its extent, etc.

Moreover, with time International Courts have gained access to judge other
subjects of International Law. Thus, some IGOs such as the EU can operate in
International Courts or Organizations such as the WTO, since it has the capacity
to manage its own trade and customs and therefore it can intervene in WTO
Panels. Similarly, sometimes Corporations can participate in international
disputes (for instance, regarding Investment practices) by being represented by
their home-state. Lastly, some International Courts such as the Council of
Europe and Organization for American States provide locus standi for
individuals as well, protecting Human Rights.

● On the other hand, conflict resolution can also be achieved by Bi-lateral

negotiations whose mechanisms are established in treaties. For example, the UN
Convention against Corruption does not concede power to the UN to take any
action, but it receives claims of corruption and petitions to members to
investigate their banks and spot the accounts that contain money coming from
illegal activities. When those accounts have been spotted (or goods, properties)
the UN helps states to negotiate bilateral agreements to make possible the
recovery of assets.

● Last but not least, Arbitration, mediation, and conciliation are also ways of
achieving conflict resolution in international disputes. In fact, some of these
mechanisms are treaty-based when concerning specific matters. For instance,
ITLOS (The International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea) can exert its
jurisdiction regarding any complaint in that subject, but also encourages states to
resort to other mediation mechanisms.

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3. International economic regulations.
The activity of IO has been specially relevant in creating economic regulations for
states, allowing to reach agreements in such a controversial topic by providing the
mediation of an impartial body. The most relevant areas have been:
- Tariffs and Trade (GATT & WTO) → WTO created in the 1990s after
complaints against GATT.
- Free trade (EFTA) → composed of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and
Switzerland. These are states that are not part of the European Union but do
participate in the Single Market.
- Common market (EEC)
- Monetary Union (EU)

Similarly, the participation of IO has been essential regarding cooperation to improve

economic development. As a case in point, the IMF reviews Public Policy of states
based on a minimum standards (if this review was made by states it would be
considered biased or with hidden interests). In the same way, the World Bank allocates
funding and investment for developing states.

Lastly, IOs provide mechanisms for Dispute settlement also in the economic sphere.
Thus, within the World Bank Group system there is an International Center for
settlement of Investment Disputes, as well as the Dispute Settlement Body (panel,
arbitration, …) of the WTO, which allows states to confront each other.

4. Human rights protection.

The labor of IOs has been especially rigorous in the field of setting Human Rights
Standards based on the minimum standard imposed by international custom. Thus, IOs
have created Universal and Regional Human Rights Conventions such as the OAS
(Organization of American States) and the CoE (Council of Europe), and dispute
resolution mechanisms that allow enhance individuals’ capacities to an international
level. For instance, the CoE created the ECtHR (European Court of Human Rights)
which allows individuals to claim against their home state for human rights violations;
and the OAS established the IACtHR (Inter-American Court of Human Rights) where
individuals can bring claims before the American system (however, the claim will be
enhanced by the IO and not the individual himself).

IOs action has been equally crucial regarding Humanitarian Law proliferation, by
compiling International Custom in the form of treaties (for example, the Red Cross
fosters the creation of treaties regarding disarmament, minimum standards of treatment,
etc.), rationalizing the use of force through the intervention of bodies such as the
Security Council (thus, ensuring that their interference is not biased nor controlled by a
single powerful state), and establishing International Courts. These can be:
• Ad Hoc Courts → created to deal specifically with severe crimes
against humanity (Yugoslavia and Rwanda), are dissolved once that the
remedy has been reached.

35
 • Hybrid Courts → Created by an agreement of an IO with a given state.
Case of Libanon to try terrorists. Not really national nor international.
• Permanent Courts (ICCt) → International Criminal Court Rome Treaty
1998 considered a pure IO.

5. Creation and application of International law.

IOs play an essential role in the law-making process by sponsoring treaties and
registering the members (for example, the UN has sponsored every major HR treaty, but
that does not imply that any violation of the treaty committed by UN personnel could
result in the UN being tried, because it has not ratified it), creating regulations and
introducing soft-law standards and decisions (which represent an international moral
obligation rather than a legal one).

Furthermore, IOs also perform as law enforcers and interpreters. For instance, the
International Law Commission gathers, summarizes and codifies IL; and IOs’ judicial
bodies not only apply any treaty or regime that is of their jurisdiction, but also have the
mandate to interpret them.

6. Others.
Regime theory → certain regimes are better enforced through the intervention of IOs.
- Environmental
- Energy
-…

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LESSON 6: LEGAL ORDER.
The legal order of IOs refers to the legal processes inside them. To make sure that what the IO
is doing is what it was created for, to ensure it is acting legally.

1. Constitution.
2. Attribution of powers.
3. Classifying international organs. Advisory and supervisory organs.
4. Decisions. Interpretation, settlement of disputes, supervision

andsanctions.

1. CONSTITUTION.

A) INTERNATIONAL (FOUNDING) TREATY.

The constitution of an IO is done through an international treaty up to 99% of the time.
Most authors appear inclined to grant constituent treaties a separate status from the one of
regular or ordinary treaties, as the have an organic-constitutive element. Although this has yet
to find serious elaboration and substantiation, some authors have detailed the characteristics a
constituent treaty has that an ordinary one does not: Often concluded for an indefinite period,
may only be amended or terminated with help of the organization’s pertinent organs, are often
interpreted in light of the organization’s goals, power is used in the pursuit of a common goal
(rather than in the pursuit of concurring goals), etc. One factual example of these differences
between constituent treaties and ordinary ones is the accession of a new member state. In the
ordinary treaties, it normally is a unilateral act of the new state in case the treaty is opened for
accession. In the case of constituent treaties, it is not enough with this unilateral act as
consultations, recommendations and decisions are needed from certain organs of the
organization.
According to IL, international treaties are regulated by the Vienna Convention of 1969,
specially matters such as signatories, reservations, modifications, amendments, termination and
withdrawal. The matters where the law of IOs may depart from the general law of treaties are
the reservations, revision, termination and interpretation.
There are scholars who think that every treaty is different as the goal, organs, power and legal
instruments established by the treaty can be very different from one another. Therefore, there
can be some tensions among the general regulation of the Vienna Convention and the specific
treaties. In fact, there can be some contradictions. But the specific rule is preferred over the
general one.
Signatories (membership).
Talking about tensions, the treaty can impose new requirement not regulated in the Convention
for the accession of a new member state, just like in the UN, where the GA and the SC have to
decide if the new member is a peace-loving state.

37
Reservations (compatibility of reservations).
The treaty can provide that no reservations are permissible or that they are. The problem
emerges when the treaty remains silent. The ICJ has declared that in this case, the “object and
purpose”
test shall be formulated, this is states can make reservations unless these are incompatible with
the object and purpose of the treaty concerned.
This is a rather vague criterion as it is difficult to determine what is the purpose of the treaty,
and even more difficult to determine who has to take that decision. In IL, there is not one
central authority with the charge of accept reservations, it is a matter of each member of the
organization, who are the ones that have the power to accept or object those reservations. This
can lead to the contradiction of ideas.
There may be the case where some specific organs have the capacity to accept or object any
reservation, and even to forbid a state to become a new member. This is the case of the ECHR,
which supervise domestic policies regarding its field and if some state wants to present a
reservation incompatible with the treaty, the ECHR can dismiss the application of that member.
An analogous situation is the one of the UN for the Convention on Privileges and Immunities of
the UN and the Convention on Privileges and Immunities of the Specialized Agencies. Another
example would be the UNHRC in respect of the ICCPR, however this is very criticized as the
UNHRC does not have the power to make binding decisions, not even in respect of
reservations.
Revision: Modifications and Amendments (capacity to amend).
Amend an international treaty that creates and IO is very problematic because we find tensions
between the possible need to adapt the constituent treaty to the circumstances and the need to
pay attention to considerations of state sovereignty.
The constituent document may contain some provisions on the revision. It can happen that it
provides that there is need of unanimity. But normally, what the treaty provides is that
amendments may become affective with a two-thirds majority. In this case, the treaty can
specify that the not accepting states cease to be members, that they are bound, that they are not
bound, or not specifying anything.
- An example of “more specific” would be the TEU, which requires unanimity, therefore
everyone has veto power (this is not efficient at all in IOs with large membership). And
other example, the UN charter requires two-third majority and states that amendments
are binding for all members.
- An example of “less specific” would be the Charter of OAU, which requires a two-thirds
majority, but does not specify what happen to the outvoted members.
When the constituent treaty does not have a provision at all or it is not clear if the existent
provision can be applied to the topic addressed, the situation is more complex.
According to the Vienna Convention, the original treaty shall be kept for those members that
have decided not to ratify the amendments. For example, if with the change of the GATT to the
WTO one state had decided not to join the new IO, the treaty of the GATT would have to be
respected still for them. When amendments are of marginal importance, they will not pose
unmanageable problems. When amendments relate to substantive law, it may be awkward or
unfair, but not necessarily problematic. The biggest problem comes when such amendments
relate to such issues as voting or decision-making procedures.
In order to facilitate flexibility is common to distinguish between amendments which create
new obligations and amendments that do not (technical or executive ones). The ones creating
new obligations may require a qualified majority, states will need to ratify them in accordance

38
with their domestic procedures and they will be binding only upon those member states that
have accepted them. The amendments not creating new obligations may be affective using a
simple majority, may enter into force by adoption and may be binding on all members.
Again, a problem may arise with the question of who shall be empowered to make the
determination that a proposed amendment involves a new obligation. Some say that this
correspond to members individually. Who think this would be very impartial considers more
appropriate the organs of the organization to decide, preferably its plenary organs.
When the modifications or amend (mainly the former) is about an organ of the IO, the newly
created legal obligation is mandatory for the states that has been reluctant to the modification
too. So, we find the situation of the creation of an organ without the consent of a member.
Termination and withdrawal.
It is useful to have a provision regarding the possibility of withdrawal as if members are forced
to remain members against their wishes they may find several ways of sabotaging the correct
functioning of the organization. The Vienna Convention deals with withdrawal from a treaty
containing no provisions about it laying down a general rule, which is that the treaty is not
subject to withdrawal unless we can infer it was the intention of the drafters or it is implied in
the nature of the agreement.
Regarding termination, the main problem comes when the treaty is silent about this aspect.
When this happen, one of the interpretations is that the IO is terminated once the purpose is
fulfilled, but this is very difficult to apply as the goals of IOs are normally very broad and
abstract.

B) INTERPRETATION OF THE TREATY.

A treaty creating an IO differ from a general international treaty in the very specific purpose the
former has: creating an IO. Article 31 of the Vienna Convention claims that the interpretation of
a treaty must be done according to the good faith principle, and that it should come out of the
purpose the treaty was created, this is the desire of the founding states. However, this has been
further developed by academics in the functionalism theory. Functionalism theory defends a
teleological interpretation. It said that whenever there is something that needs to be
interpretated, the interpretation should be done according to the ends, goals and porpoises of
the organization. This means that there is a priority of goals over the literal interpretation, over
the draft text.
Example: Attribution of international legal personality to the UN. Article 104 UN Charter
claims that the UN will have all the necessary powers to fulfil its goals within the member
states. But that is all, the Charter is silent in the topic of legal personality as it did not have a
specific provision. Back in 1949 it was a problem, but with the resolution of the ICJ we know
being silent does not mean that legal personality cannot be inferred from practice.
An important question relating to interpretation is the question of who is entitled to interpret
constituent treaties, who has the power to interpret. In a regular treaty, each party is responsible
for its own interpretation. But in a constituent treaty we are not only dealing with states, but
with the organs of the organization too. In the first at least, we can say that there is no legal
hierarchy between the organs of an organization when it comes to interpreting the constituent
treaty, so any organ has the power to determine its own interpretation. And states will have to
conform to these interpretations. Authoritative interpretations in the UN system are in balance
between the principal organs, whereas in the EU the balance tilts clearly in favour of the CJEU.

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2. ATTRIBUTION OF POWERS
What the constituent treaty said about what each organ can do. The basic problem is that when
we talk about states, there are organs that are the depositary of the national sovereignty, so they
can do “whatever” they want. But IOs are not sovereign, they have qualified and not objective
legal personality. They are highly dependent on the constituent treaty, so if it does not say an
organ has certain power, we cannot infer it does. But this is not exactly how it works, as that
would be a very limited scope of powers. In fact, the attribution of powers and the question
whence those powers spring has assumed an enormous importance, and it is often considered
the most relevant question in IL.
The doctrines of attribution and implied powers, for all difference, both place the member states
firmly in control. By contrast, the doctrine of inherent powers places organization under control
on the international legal order. (Explained below.)

A) FUNTIONS AND POWERS.

Functions are those big abstract general goals. Powers are very specific and
defined. Powers of the organization.

For an IOs to pursue its objective, there are different powers the organization has as a whole.
Mainly, creating secondary law (art. 5 Vienna 1969) such as specific provisions, regulations,
new organs that were foresaw in the constituent treaty… For example: According to the UN
Charter there are 5 organs clearly defined. But there are other sub-bodies that have been
developed, like the Security Council creating the International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia.
This may make us think IOs may be outperforming the will of the drafters. They could be
engaging themselves in more activities than initially stated. They could easily flow into a
“mission creep”, which is overdoing it. The bigger example is the objective of peace keeping
of the UN, which can authorize the use of force by decision of the SC according to art. 42. But
it is actually not a power contained in the constituent treaty. It lives in the grey area where the
treaty is silent.
Is it uncontrolled? Back in 1994, the peace keeping forces of the UN engage into real fire in
Somalia. Now, it is more under controlled, but it is a very controversial matter. We can find a
system similar to check and balance in some IOs, but in many others to exercise some kind of
control is very complicate.
Powers of the organs.
The powers of the organs are a little bit different in the sense that they are attributed by the
treaty or secondary rules, they are very well described.
There must be a check of ultra vires powers, which are activities that go beyond the legal
coverage, acting without legal grounds.
These powers of the organs are subject to control, but it does not happen frequently in reality. In
the EU we could claim there are some organs that are controlling the rest. But normally, the
capacity of an IO to supervise itself is very unfulfilled.
Responsibility of the IGO.
Whenever the organization is outperforming and causing serious damage, there is a
responsibility. It can be understood in different ways:

40
 - Vs. Member States. They do not have to follow what the IO says. For example, the EU
creates a single market, and the European Commission along with the European
Parliament get to the conviction that the only possible way to create and to maintain it
is declaring war against the UK. The EU follows all the internal requirements for
passing
the decision. But they are taking a decision which is not in its scope. Any member state
must follow the decisions of the EU, but not in this case. If the state that decided not to
join the war get invaded by the UK, who is the responsible?
- Vs. Third parties. In the case there is only damage, the third-party could claim against the
I. If the IO has exceeded its mandate, can the third-party still claim against the member
states?
- Vs. Staff. For instance, the EU is in war with the UK and an Italian gets killed. Whom
does the family demand responsibility? It is very complex and it would depend on the
organic structure of the IO.

B) ATTRIBUTED POWERS.
The Attributed Powers Doctrine (principle of attribution of conferred powers) is based on the
clear description by the treaty of what the organs can do and cannot do. It has its origins in the
consideration of interpretation of the constituent treaty as a highly instable and uncertain way of
referring to the powers of an IO.
For example, article 13 TEU, which specifies that each institutions of the organization shall act
within the limits of the powers conferred on it in the Treaties.
However, following this doctrine strictly brings several problems:
- One is the unforeseen situations (for example, the international legal personality of the
UN). The drafters cannot be expected to think of every possible contingency, so it is
inevitable that the constituent documents come with gaps.
- Another one is the problem about the agency of the IOs, as they would not have the
capacity to take decisions by themselves, only what the states said in the treaty, and the
powers given may not be suitable to reach the goals of the IO anymore. This would
mean no distinct will.

C) IMPLIED POWERS.
The Implied Powers Doctrine is the opposite. It claims that it is true there is a treaty, but it is
also true that the interpretation needs to go beyond the draft text to understand what the final
purpose of the IO is and to guarantee its fullest effect. And the powers attributed to the organs
would depend on what appears to be in the treaty even though it may not be explicit but
implicit. Therefore, it is a functional reading. The action is presumed not to be ultra vires when
the action is appropriate for the fulfilment of a states purpose of the organization.
For example, the 1954 advisory opinion of the ICJ in the Effect of Awards casa, where the Court
was asked whether the General Assembly UN had the power to establish an administrative
tribunal which itself capable of taking binding decisions. The ICJ answered affirmative by
saying that the UN has the express aim of promoting freedom and justice for individuals, so the
creation of such tribunal was necessary to ensure it between the Organization and the staff
members as well.
This can bring us to the problem that interpretation depends on the wye of the beholder, that an
IO may go crazy not having any control at all, falling out of the scope of the will, overdoing,

41
etc. This has been faced as a problem in the EU with the subsidiarity principle.
In general, that the attribution of powers must follow two norms. First, the power has to be
attributed by the treaty or a provision. Secondly, the subsidiarity principle, which means that
the power can not be conferred if that power is more suitable in another organ.

D) INHERENT POWERS
The Inherent Power Doctrine or Objective Theory is far from being well established. It means
that just by the nature of IOs, just by the fact all IOs are created by international treaties, all IOs
have the same powers, objective powers (for instance, the capacity to create international
treaties with other organizations or with states although the founding treaty is silent about it).
According to the academics, the limits come in the other way around from the Attributed
Powers Doctrine, so everything is allowed except for what is explicitly prohibited in the treaty.
This is called “Reverse powers”. Therefore, IOs would have arrived to that point where the do
not have qualified legal personality anymore but objective one.
The advantages are twofold. First, it is thoroughly practical as it helps organizations reach their
aims without being hidebound by the legal niceties of its individual, and often obscurely
drafted, provisions. Second, it makes legal control easier as the only thing to control is that the
act shall aim to achieve the organization’s purpose and it may not be expressly prohibited.
One serious drawback is that it possibly goes against the wishes of the drafters. It is possible
that if an act was not expressively prohibited it was because it was prohibited by implication.
Other critic is the very notion of “inherent” because something inherent cannot be cast aside by
founders.

E) (PLUS TEXTO que no se puede meter en otro lado)

Furthermore, powers of the member states and the organization can interfere. For example, the
debate in the EU as to whether the power to conclude air traffic agreement or investment
treaties still remain with the member states. The Court has decided that member states can no
longer conclude such agreements, not so much because they would have delegated or
transferred a power to do so to the EU, but rathe because the principle of fidelity pre-empts
them from interfering (if only potentially) with the EU law. By the “open method of
coordination” (similar to what treaties call shared of complementary powers) uncertainties
about the division of powers between the organization and its member states are kind of
addressed.
But we also have to consider that the construction of power derives not solely from the member
states, but also from other circumstances. A very illustrative example of this is the ICJ’s
opinion on the WHO’s request relating to nuclear weapons. The Court construe the scope of
powers of the WHO not only being independent on what the WHO’s own constituent treaty
says (intentions of the member states), but also as part of the larger family of UN- related
organizations. Therefore, the WHO had no business engaging with the legality of weapon
because this was competence of the UN General Assembly.

3. CLASSIFYING INTERNATIONAL ORGANS. ADVISORY AND SUPERVISORY

ORGANS.
The classification of international organs can be made in multiple ways. As long as it follows a
logical criteria it would be alright. We are going to take the following one.

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A) PLENARY ORGANS.
Where there is a certain representativeness. For example, the General Assembly of the UN or of
the WHO. Those plenary organs are very important in the sense that they normally take
decisions that are on behalf of the IO as well as on behalf of member states. They are the
organs where the national and international interests come together.
They do have a large amount of discretionary power as they are basically the same interested or
actors that created the IO. So, it would be very complicated to differentiate among decisions
taking in the treaty or as part of secondary rules.
In the EU, the European Council is the one organ where all member states are represented, so it
was the organ which was in charge of the negotiations for Brexit. It decided to follow the legal
procedure for withdrawals but they acted without the capacity attributed by the treaty in part as
they made prorogations when the treaty only says that it is a two-year period. But was this
acting ultra vires? According to the treaty yes. But it is also true that those same members who
could bring a claim against the EU are the ones that agreed on the prorogations by unanimity.
So, what they are doing is a factual modification.

B) NON-PLENARY.
The representativeness is not so evident. For instance, the UN Security Council as not all state
members are represented. Non-plenary organs have a more specific treaty-based capacity. They
can have all sort of functions:
- Policymaking.
- Adjudicating (in case of courts).
- Administrative (even in case of courts to regulate relations with staff).
Ultra vires powers may be controlled by the plenary organs.

C) TECHNICAL BODIES.
They do not enjoy representative power as they do not have any national representation. They
are just populated with people with the necessary capacities.
They do not have discretionary power, this is power out of the treaty or their legal instruments.
Their action are highly foreseeable and knowledgeable.

4. DECISIONS. INTERPRETATION, SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES, SUPERVISION

AND SANCTIONS.

A) DECISION-MAKING.
Decisions need to be taken by legal procedures that can be established or created by the treaty,
by secondary rules, by the organs themselves, by the plenary organs… This decision making
would explain:
• Who. Who is to vote and the weight of each vote...
• When. When the decision is to be taken, when is the time to vote…
• How. How the decision is going to be taken (unanimity, single or qualified majority),

43
 how many members can have a voice…
• What. What kind of topics…

B) CONTROL OF DECISION-MAKING.
It is very problematic. Here it is where the problem of ultra vires kicks in as there are normally
no organs other than the plenaries to control the decision making. There are some exceptions
where there is control.
The control can be:
- External control. For instance, the ILO has an administrative tribunal where the staff can
bring claims. Another case would be when an IO is party of another IO (for example, the
EU in the WTO would be suited for dispute settlement procedures as if it were a state). -
Internal control. More problematic. It is basically supervisory organs.

C) ENFORCING ACTION.
IOs have a sanction regime through which they can sanction their own members states in case
one of them is not fully complying, or it changes its political mind regarding IOs, etc.
There can be direct enforcement:
- Internal sanctions (expulsion). For example, Venezuela was expelled from the
Organization of the American States because the organization found that Venezuela’s
domestic policies were not suitable with the purposes of the organization.
- External sanctions (retorsions…). To those states that are not parties. For example, the
EU against certain high representatives of Russia and China because of violation of
HHRR.
Rather than economic sanctions, it is more about reputation and morality. The case of the
Dominican Republic, which directly decided to withdraw itself from the Organization of the
American States to avoid sanctions and the reputation damage that would going to cause
antiimmigrant policies.

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 LESSON 7: LEGAL STATUS
The legal status of IOs is the role of IOs in IL. What is the place IL has chosen for
IOs? 1. Status in International law.

2. Participation and Succession of IL.

3. Manifestations of International personality.
4. External relations: relations with States, and other International
organizations. 5. Instruments of external relations.

1. STATUS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW.

The status of IOs under IL basically comes out of two elements that can explain the two large
theories of what the attribution of IOs is and, considering it is an international agent, who is
delegating powers in the IO? The member states? The drafters? A superior interest?

A) CONSTITUENT TREATY
It is an international treaty regulated by the Vienna Convention 1969. The constituent treaty is
the first document necessary to study in order to check the legal capacity of the IO, in which
there are many of the specific attributions that the drafters have decided that the IO should
have: certain powers, certain legal personality and certain international responsibility.
- Powers. But most of the time, IOs have some powers that are not in the treaty, but implicit
ones.
- Legal personality. It is not so clear that the fact that there is or not a specific provision
attributing international personality means the IO has it or not. It can be a void
provision if the IO is not recognised by third parties. The Vienna Convention itself
declare it is forbidden to create obligations for third parties without the consent of it.
And the other way around, if the drafters decide not to attribute the legal personality,
maybe third parties come to an agreement with that IO. Answers to this will not be
provided by Il, but academics and the jurisdiction of certain courts, like the ICJ (case
of 1949).
- Responsibility. To what extent an IO may be held responsible because a wrongful
international act? There can be specific provisions in the constituent treaty. But
sometimes there are not.

B) INTERNATIONAL LAW
3rd parties
(The importance of third parties is explained in last section, about legal
personality). IGO´s Agency: self-determination

Let’s imagine an IO has to water a garden and it starts to rain. If the IO have to water the garden
anyways, it is because it has very little legal capacity, it is limited to its mandate and cannot
decide to not water the garden.
If in the contrary, the IO is empowered by such provisions and functions that enable it to not
water the garden because it would be stupid as it is raining, we can say the IO can take

45
decisions by its own -> it has agency -> independent agent -> subject of IL.
This attribution may come from the constituent treaty and the will of the drafter, or from IL.
The problem is that IL does not have any clear statement claiming that IOs should have an
independent will. Although their independent will can be recognised as much as we could
claim there are specific powers that are already part of customary law.
Objective theory: content of the objective attributions?
States legal personality are of the sovereign, so they have unlimited powers. But IO only have
the attributed powers by the states (subjective theory). However, IL may come to a time in the
future when IL alone can provide the legal shape to IOs just because the IO meets the
organizationhood criteria, so it would be automatically attributed with certain legal status and
therefore some powers and limits that do not have to necessary be in the treaty (objective
theory).
As long as third parties recognise and interact with IOs, and IOs keep acting with free will, we
could claim the objective theory is a growing theory. But the problem is what is the content of
that attributions? Lawyers claim that the content should, at least, reach to instruments. The first
one would be the providing IO with the capacity to create treaties, and therefore take decisions,
and therefor create obligations to third parties, and therefore having international responsibility.
Because if you can take decisions you are accountable for that decisions. With a big power
comes a big responsibility.

2. PARTICIPATION AND SUCCESSION OF IOs UNDER IL.

A) LIFESPAN OF THE IGO.
It is the capacity of the IO to participate within IL.
Kick-off
IOs only start when the constituent treaty comes to force. It bring no further
problems. Dissolution

It is more problematic. When a state ceases to exist, there is nothing behind. When an IO ceases
to exist, there are states.
- What happen to obligations the IO may have reached toward third states, its workers…
any third party?
- What happen to the international treaties the IO has joined?
- Who is responsible?
- What is the procedure to terminate an IO? It is a matter of member states? Of the IO
itself? The procedure would probably fall on the plenary organ, but this may not be
enough.

B) SUCCESSION.
However, termination is not that frequent. We have quite a few examples of termination with no
cessation, but succession. This is the termination of the legal structure of the IOs, but the
function continues. For example, from the League of Nations to the UN, from the Belgium
Treaty to
NATO, from the Organization for the Security of Europe to the OSCE, from the GATO to the
WTO…

46
This is a very smooth procedure. Workers of the old IO may just be recruited for the new
organization, obligations are honoured…
Formal Transformation:
When it comes to termination, it normally happens in a factual manner. But for succession,
there must be some kind of formal procedure.
Substitution, merger, transfer.
In general terms, there are three forms in which the succession can happen (READINGS)
As long as the IO is lived, it is participating in IL. What we can assert to a 100% certainty is
whether this is happening because of the will of the member states (subjectivity theory) or
because of expressed recognition of IL (objective law).

3. MANIFESTATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL PERSONALITY.

Legal personality is a legal concept lawyers use in order to make a distinctions among who can
perform actions and interact with the legal system. So, it is just a fiction for recognising what
are the subjects of the legal system. Legal personality is just the capacity to be a
recipient/subject of rights and obligations. (Puso un ejemplo de una señora que fue a denunciar
a Dios porque había tenido muy mala suerte en su vida y la jueza le dijo que Dios no era sujeto
de derecho, por lo que no podía ser demando… i mean) Domestic law has a legal personality
attribution, which is adults that have plein conscious and can take decisions on their own. If we
individuals want to bring a claim before the ICJ, it is not possible because we do not have legal
standing or attribution of legal personality in that case.
To our matter, IOs do have international legal personality, but we have to make a distinction.
There are two ways to approach the international personality of international organizations:
domestically or purely internationally.

A) DOMESTIC LEGAL PERSONALITY

The domestic legal personality approach is how member states recognise the IO. What kind of
powers and attribution have given to it.
When it comes to the constituent treaty, it can contain concrete provisions to avoid any further
misunderstanding. We find examples of domestic legal personality such as the article 104 of the
UN Charter that recognises that member states recognise that the UN will have full powers
inside the state to perform its functions. Also, article 47 TEU and 335 TFEU declare that the
EU shall have legal personality and the EU shall enjoy the most extensive legal capacity
accorded to legal persons under their laws. Therefore, it is based on a functional necessity and
it generally implies the largest possible degree of personality. Of course, this is only applicable
within the member states. If the EU wish to sue an Ethiopian company it will depend on
Ethiopian law.
When the constituent treaty is silent about the attribution of legal personality we can infer that
because of the fact that member states have undertaken an obligation to sustain the provisions
of the treaty, via the factual via they are recognising the existence of the IO. So, in this case we
need to check all the attributions, the main powers, the resolutions… We can also find specific
provisions included only in the national law of a member state recognising the existence of the
IO. For instance, a budgetary law providing funds for the IO the state belong to.

47
The domestic legal personality of an organization may also extend to its organs, and even its
subsidiary bodies. For example, in 1990 the UN’s Office of Legal Affairs said that the
representatives of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) have the authority to conclude
contractual agreements.

B) INTERNATIONAL LEGAL PERSONALITY

The full international personality is the attribution of powers to interact with not member states,
other IOs and other international agents. In this case, the explicit attribution of international
legal personality is not and cannot be decisive, but it is a prove of what the drafters had in
mind.
There are two main theories: the will or subjective theory and the objective
theory. Will theory

The problem with the international legal personality and the will theory is that IOs are still
created via treaty, so they are not sovereign subjects and its will can be very limited. The treaty
specifies the attributions and the obligations that member states have consented. In the case of
the ICJ’s opinion in the Reparations for Injuries, although the UN Charter did not include the
capacity of the UN to bring claims, the ICJ decided that it was possible because of the will of
the funders. However, we have to remember that no obligation can be created for third parties
without their consent, according to article 36 Vienna Convention. So, third party recognition,
this is the recognition or the existence of a free will agent or subject by third parties, is
essential to ensure the correct functioning of the international legal personality of an IO.
Objective theory.
According to the objective theory of personality, just for meeting with the organization-hood
criteria the IO would have certain legal personality and therefore certain legal powers,
attributions, even though they were not recognised in the constituent treaty. The, the will of the
founders does not decide on personality as a separate matter. The main requirement for
organization-hood is to have an independent will, and this is something rather fictional as
decisions are usually taken by majority of the member states. But the biggest problem is that
this would not recognise the power of states to shape IO, so it would scape the management
and control of members states, so there are more possibilities that the IO falls in a mission
creep and goes against the intentions of the founders.
In order to solve this, a more pragmatic approach has been created: the “presumptive
personality”. This notion refers to the presumption of international legal personality as soon as
the organization performs acts which can only be explained on the basis of international legal
personality. This was also held by the aforementioned ICJ’s case in the Reparations for
Injuries.

4. EXTERNAL RELATIONS: RELATIONS WITH STATES, AND OTHER

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS.

A) RELATIONS WITH STATES.

Member states:
Constituent treaty.

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The main document to study this relation is the constituent treaty, as there we can find the set of
powers attributed, the reservations made, etc.
Standard-setting.
Depending on the powers attributed to the IO to fulfil its obligations and goals, it is possible for
the IO to have the capacity for dictate standards for every member state.
Privileges & immunities.
When the IO operates within one single state, it is normal to find some short of headquarter
agreements with the hosting state. This is just an agreement about how the hosting state ad its
domestic law is excluded from being applied to the worker and the property of the IO.
There are certain IOs that do have specific conventions or specific treaties regarding the
privileges and immunities not just in their hosting state. For example, the UN has it not only
for the countries where it has headquarters but also for states where it deploys operations. The
Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations of 1946 has been joined by
a large number of countries.
The problem with privileges and immunities is to differentiate when the IO is allegedly acting
intra vires (within its powers) or ultra vires (because if so, the IO loses its privileges and
immunities).
Non-member states:
It is very important to check this other kind of relation. Here we find two elements: the treaty
making power and the dismissal of international responsibility. (Esto dice que lo da en el tema
8)
B) RELATIONS WITH OTHER IGOs.
There are two basic powers that IOs have to bring action together:
Treaty-making power.
Membership to another IOs.
Capacity of one IO to become a member of another IO. This is a task to be fulfil by IL, which is
silent about this possibility. But we have to remember that IOs are designed to performed
domestically, except in the case of very sophisticate IOs for which performing in other IO is
feasible.
This idea of membership has two-fold approaches.
- First one, the recipient IO must have a specific provision in the constituent treaty allowing
it. Expressed permission.
- Second one, the joining IO needs to have specific attributed power to do so.
For example: the EU, already a subject of IL when the WTO emerged, requested the WTO to
allow other IO to join. This was possible because the member states of the EU gave the EU
strong external and decision power.
On the contrary we have the Council of Europe European and its Convention of Human Rights
(1950). The EU denied becoming a member of that convention. However, EU members are all
full members of the Council of Europe. If EU member states follow a mandate of the ECHR,
and
the EU creates a regulation contradicting that norm, members have to decide what to follow but
they are accountable for both. What to do?

49
The problem is that IOs do not really have the means to talk and influence each

other. 5. INSTRUMENTS OF EXTERNAL RELATIONS.

A) 1986 VIENNA CONVENTION.

It is the Second Vienna Convention and relates to the capacity of IOs to reach agreements with
other IOs and non-member states. This convention has not been ratified by a sufficient number
of states to be enforced. It can not be ratified by IOs. But it is used as a reference for how IOs’
treaties should be regulated and integrated in IL. It is very similar to the Vienna Convention
1969.
Procedure, art. 6 and art. 2(1)
It finds a middle way between the subjective theory and the objective theory regarding the
procedure to create an International Treaty. So, what it does is setting two articles that express
that IOs will reach International Agreements according to its internal rules. These are:
- Constituent treaty.
- Intra vires Resolutions (resolutions that depict the power of the IO).
- Stablished practice of the IO. But what if the stablished practice were to reach
international agreements and it was not expressly recognised in the constituent treaty?
It does recognise in some way the objective theory, allowing the IO to do so.
Therefore, if the IO is not given the power to reach international agreements, then, this
convention does not provide that power.
Position of Member States (3rd party?)
What is the position of member states towards third parties? Are they bound by the
international treaties reached by the IOs? Are the not? Do they have to honour the obligations
of the IO? Does the IO have the power to create new obligations through a treaty signed by the
IO and other member state? Open questions.

B) ARIO 2011.
Domestic vs. International
In relation to the international responsibility of IOs, we currently find as a regulatory
documentation the Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations (ARIO), of
2011. It is just a document, report or piece of self-law of the International Law Commission. It
does not have a mandatory nature, it is not a valid obligations. These articles mimic the
Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, from a few years
earlier, which is not enforce neither.
It is a full set of articles created to allocate the international responsibility for international acts
of IOs regarding external relations. That is when an IO breaches an international obligation or
creates a wrongful act on the external relation side. It is external and not internal because in the
latter, there is always a kind of forum for member states to claim.
According to ARIO, a state can be responsible for a wrongful act of the IO if the state
concerned did have knowledge of the circumstances of the wrongful act and if that act would
be wrongful if committed by that state alone, as states can not use organizations to circumvent
their own obligations. But the state’s responsibility would be considered subsidiary or indirect.

50
ARIO has played an important role in some cases. However, it has proved to be less useful in
other cases as its conceptual focus rest on relations of organizations toward states or other
organizations, rather than on the exercise of public power by IOs.
Public power vs. Breach of obligations
Since IOs do not really have a role to play in external relations, to what extent are this ARIO
articles possible? Are they going to be employed effectively? Kabblers says that the
international responsibility of IOs should not fall that much on the breach of obligations, but on
the public power they performed. This is a point ARIO miss.
In IL there are certain IOs, such as the UN and the body of the Security Council, that impose
sanctions to individuals, and those sanctions may be wrongfully decided. Do individuals have
the chance to challenge those decisions? Here is where the big responsibility of IOs is falling
under, on their capacity to follow, express and execute public power, and not that much on their
relations to third-states or other IOs.

--- Notas del texto que ayudan a entender qué es la responsibility pero que, aunque
corresponderían más al apartado de ARIO 2011 (que es el que trata de la responsibility),
no se pueden meter en ningún apartado como tal ---
The line of responsibility within an IO and its members states is still blurry. At the beginning, it
was not considered that IOs should have international responsibility themselves as this was only
possible for states. Under functionalist theory this made sense as IOs are only the creatures of
their states and it were the states the ones in charge of controlling the IOs. But it turned out that
in the course of activities of IOs, third parties could be affected too.
Few charters of IOs contain responsibility clauses.
To understand responsibility, it is useful to make some distinctions.
- The first one would be between responsibility under domestic law and under international
law.
- The second one would be whether it concerns a member state of the IO or whether it
concerns a third-party.
- The third distinction would be between the responsibility of the IO and any subsidiary
responsibility of the member states (if the IO is unwilling or unable to bear
responsibility). But it may perhaps also be the case that the member states incur in
direct responsibility for negligence because they fail to exercise proper control over the
IO.
- The fourth case would be an obligation that does not rest upon the IO as such, but upon
all its members. It would be the case of the position of the EU with respect to the
ECHR, as the EU is not a party of the latter but all members of the EU are. So, if the
EU violates a norm contained in the ECHR, responsibility rests upon the members
jointly.
To assign legal responsibility to an entity we presuppose certain requirements.
- First, that they are legal or moral agents (which does not mean they have legal or moral
personality).
- Also, we presuppose that they had something to do with the matter (but this is problematic
as the line between the states and the IO is often blurred, for example, if NATO drops
bombs, should we blame the IO, the states, the most influential states…?).
- Finally, we have the “paradox of obligation”. This happens when a superior gives orders
to subordinates: the more precise the order, the clearer will be the situation with respect

51
 to responsibility. One example would be ordering to sprinkle the lawn. But what
happens if it is raining? Some discretion shall be given to the subordinate to avoid that
the lawn is sprinkled. The problem comes when the situation is not so clear and the
subordinated has to exercise its discretion. For example, if it is only a light drizzle, or
if there is a general short of water. So, the degree of responsibility of the subordinated
with respect to the superior would depend on the discretionary power it has.
Considering all of this, creating a law of responsibility for IOs is a complex task. But it is only
one way of achieving accountability.
Whose behaviour?
For what sort of behaviour will an organization incur in responsibility under IL? For their
international wrongful acts, like violation of IL.
When can acts be attributed to an organization? If the act was made by a state the case is very
complex. For example, what happens if the Dutch authorities act wrongfully receiving
merchandise from Japan if they are following the normative of the EU? If the act was made by
an organ or an official of the organization, it will be attributed to the organization at least
primarily. If the IO hires local civilians, they will be considered officials of the organizations in
terms of insurance but not in terms of immunities. If the IO hires a private company to
outsource its activities, it is an option to consider that a limited liability of the member state
extends to that company. Etc.
Distinction between liability and responsibility. Responsibility is an abstract category, whereas
liability denotes an obligation to compensate. For example, if a Norwegian officer at one of
NATO’s headquarters commits something wrong, it may be the case that NATO is to be held
responsible but that the liability to compensate comes to rest on Norway.
Judicial practice has accepted the idea of dual attribution. This is recognising that both, the IO
and the state, have acted wrongfully and that both can be responsible.
The wrongful act.
A wrongful act amounts to a breach of a treaty, a breach of a customary rule of IL, a violation
of a general principle of law or not living up to unilateral promises. It is important to keep in
mind that often enough, violations of one norm are the result not of malicious intent of
negligence, but result from the pursuit of otherwise legitimate policy choices. For example, the
World Bank projects may violate the human rights of the people they displace, but this is
justified as the projects contribute to the entire populations’ welfare (in the neo-liberal
ideology).
We can also find wrongful omissions. For example, the passivity in the Rwanda’s genocide. But
this is complicated as it entails the presumption that there are clear international obligations. If
the IO, its organs and its more influential members consider that it is not the task of the
organization to intervene…
Indirect and secondary responsibility.
There are two forms of subsidiary responsibility to ensure third parties do not suffer
unnecessarily. The first one is secondary responsibility, which means that the third party has to
present its claims
first to the organization and if it defaults in providing an adequate remedy, then the third party
is entitled to proceed against the members. The second form is the indirect responsibility,
which means that states are responsible to the organization so as to enable the organization to
meet its obligation towards third parties. The problem with this last form is that, if indirect
responsibility is recognised, the IO seems like a totally independent entity and responsibility

52
shall be held by it as it has the direct one.
Some authors say that the fact of endowing the IO with legal personality may be seen to be an
act to limit the liability of the member states. Another way of limiting the liability of the states
is by including provisions declaring so in the treaties concluded between the IO and third
parties.

53
PART THREE. UNIVERSAL AND REGIONAL
ORGANIZATIONS
Lesson 8 – The United Nations
1. Creation, purposes and principles
Creation
- The UN has a clear start date which is the entry into force of the UN Charter (24th
October 1945). However, there are some previous milestones that must be
considered to understand its origin. The UN was conceived as the successor of the
League of Nations. After the League was dissolved, there were already other
international conferences that aimed for true cooperation; the foundation of the UN
also intended to use all of the lessons learned by the failure of the League
- The main milestones that precede the creation of the UN include:
a) Declaration of St James Palace, 1941: the first joint statement of goals and
principles by the Allied Powers of the WWII. It was signed by the UK, the four
co-belligerent Commonwealth Dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand
and South Africa, and eight governments in exile including Belgium,
Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and
Yugoslavia.
Obviamente os pongo todos estos nombres para que veáis qué tipo de países
participaron pero no os los aprendáis, no hace falta y él ni lo mencionó
b) Atlantic Charter, 1941 signed between the US and the UK as a joint statement of
their common goals for the post-war world
c) Declaration by UN, 1942. It formalized the Allies of WWII and was signed by
47 national governments between 1942 and 1945. It was the first time the UN
was quoted in an international agreement, and it became the basis for the UN
Charter.
d) Moscow and Teheran conferences, 1943. These were two of the most important
WWII conferences of the “Big Three” leaders: Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill.
e) Dumbarton Oaks and Yalta, 1945. The four main powers (the US, the UK, the
USSR and China) reunited in Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, to negotiate the
creation of a “general international organization”. The Yalta Conference was
held between the Big Three again in the USSR; in order to discuss the post-war
reorganization of Germany and Europe.
Purposes
- The UN was born with a clear objective of cooperation and peace. The big decisions
of the UN regarding peace would have to come from international formal
agreements from the big powers, which is why the US, the UK, the USSR and
China agreed to keep a veto power in the Security Council. France was finally
invited as a fifth big power, also in order to have an odd number of permanent
members.
- In addition, the UN was conceived as an opposition to the Nazi system, which
believed in racial superiority and social Darwinism. Contrarily, the UN was born as
a union of countries which believed in self-determination and peace. Just like the

54
 League had been created by the winners of WWI, winners of WWII reached and
international agreement of more than fifty states that were open to all
“peace-loving” states.

- Today, there are five main goals that make up the purposes of the
a) Maintain International Peace and Security
b) Protect Human Rights
c) Deliver Humanitarian Aid
d) Support Sustainable Development and Climate action
e) Uphold International Law
- These are what the functionalist theory would call “goals” of the IO. The purpose of
the UN should not revolve around the power of their states but rather around their
goals.
- The original purposes of the UN were enunciated by Article 1 of the UN Charter:
Article 1. “The Purposes of the United Nations are:
1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective
collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and
for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to
bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice
and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or
situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of
equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate
measures to strengthen universal peace;
3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an
economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and
encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all
without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.
4. And to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of
these common ends”
- To these goals we must add sustainable development and climate change, which
came after. It could be argued that they could fit in some of the previous goals.
- Another important goal is to Uphold International Law: what the UN is trying to do
is to establish an international rule of law, that is, a system of previously known that
are acknowledged and followed by all states.
This sets the core of a liberal institutionalism, rather than realism or universalism.
The UN allows states to remain the locus of power but seeks for an interconnection
and cooperation of them through the creation of a system of rules and protocols for
them to follow.
Principles
- They are enunciated by Article 2 of the UN Charter:
Article 2. “The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in
Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles”:

55
 1. Equal sovereignty: “The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign
equality of all its Members”.
2. Good faith: “All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and
benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations
assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter”.
3. Peaceful dispute settlement: “All Members shall settle their international
disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and
security, and justice, are not endangered”.
4. Refrain from use of force: “All Members shall refrain in their international
relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or
political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the
Purposes of the United Nations”.
5. Give the UN assistance: “All Members shall give the United Nations every
assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter and shall
refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is
taking preventive or enforcement action”.
6. Non-member’s cooperation: “The Organization shall ensure that states which are
not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so
far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security”.
7. Non-intervention: “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the
United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic
jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to
settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the
application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII”

- Every single state that joins the Charter recognized that it would abide by those
principles.
- Regarding the cooperation of non-members: there are currently very few territories
that are not part of the UN (in this sense, the UN has been very successful in its goal
of universality). Some exceptions include Taiwan. There are now 193 members
states of the UN, including two with observer status: The Holy See and Palestine.
But when the UN was first created in 45, there were only 51 members so that for
that time, this principle made sense.

2. Admission. The rise of universal organizations.

- According to Article 3 of the Charter, “The original Members of the United Nations
shall be the states which, having participated in the United Nations Conference on
International Organization at San Francisco, or having previously signed the
Declaration by United Nations of 1 January 1942, sign the present Charter and ratify
it in accordance with Article 110”.
- The admission is regulated under Article 4 of the Charter: “Membership in the
United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations
contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able
and willing to carry out these obligations.
The admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be
effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the
Security Council”

56
 Thus, in order for a state to become a member, it needs to apply: it must recognize
the principles, the Security Council provides an overview and then the General
Assembly accepts them.
The only material requisite is that the state is “peace-loving”, which is a very open
term that could be open for interpretation.
- Suspension is regulated by Article 5: “A Member of the United Nations against
which preventive or enforcement action has been taken by the Security Council may
be suspended from the exercise of the rights and privileges of membership by the
General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council. The exercise
of these rights and privileges may be restored by the Security Council”.
The UN reserves the right to suspend those states who do not behave according to
the principles of the UN or due to the ceasing their monetary contribution. In those
cases, the UNGA can decease to temporarily suspend (not terminate) the country.
- The Charter does not regulate any withdrawal procedure. The Vienna Convention
indicated that depending on the case, it should be possible to withdraw from the UN.
It is actually very hard to withdraw from the UN, precisely because the withdrawal
mechanism of the League is considered one of the reasons for its failure. If a
country intends to leave the UN, it should follow a very complex political
negotiation with all involved. The only country that has tried was Indonesia, which
tried to in 65 but then a year after they took it back because it had initiated as a
regional conflict that was finally resolved. There are some cases of suspensions, but
it is not a usual practise either.
Nota: en clase el profesor dijo que quien había tratado de salirse de la UN era
Malasia y no Indonesia, pero internet pone que fue Indonesia por un conflicto que
tuvo con Malasia, así que os dejo Indonesia que me fío más de Wikipedia jeje
- The UN system
a) The “UN system” refers to the combination of the UN with all other associated
organs. It is an array of IOs with a universal scope whose will is to have the
most universal scope possible in order to take decisions that can affect the whole
planet
b) The reason why the UN has achieved its universality goal is precisely because
the admission of a country in the UN supposes the ability to participate in all of
these organs. Example: Palestine bringing the US to the ICJ due to moving the
embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a sacred place. They could do this because
the UN had accepted the state of Palestine as an observer: it is not in the interest
of the UN to have a discussion on whether it is an actual state enough to be a full
member, so that just like the Holy See it considers it an observer.

3. Functions Nota: el profesor decidió explicar juntos este punto y el siguiente porque
al explicar los órganos pone las funciones que tiene cada uno.
4. UN Structure
NOTA IMPORTANTE: subió a AG junto con la lección 8 un pdf que se llama “UN
system” y es como un resumen de todos los órganos de la UN, os recomiendo que os lo
miréis porque está resumido todos los órganos que tenemos que estudiarnos. No os lo
pego aquí porque quedaría muy pequeño y es a color, entonces ya decidís vosotros si lo
queréis imprimir aparte.

57
- The Trusteeship Council is not longer enforced. It worked to enforce the agrreemnts
of the mandates in the League of Nations during decolonizaitn. The rest of the
organs are still working on a day-to-day basis.
- See mix of colours: there are organs that depend on two organs.
- The Specialist Agencies are created through a different international treaty and have
legal personality on their own. Actually, some of them were created before the UN,
like the Labour Organization that was created in 1919 like Lueague.
- Given that these organs have an independent will and are created by treaties, could
we claim that they are IOs on their own? We do not consider them as such, but then
we should reconsider the definition of the IOs, or nuance what we mean by
“independent will”.
- General Assembly (9-22)
a) Composition. Article 9:
1. The General Assembly shall consist of all the Members of the United
Nations.
2. Each Member shall have not more than five representatives in the
General Assembly.
It is the plenary organ and as such it has the legitimacy to take all the most
important political decisions.
b) Functions and Powers (10-17):
i. Art. 10: “The General Assembly may discuss any questions or any
matters within the scope of the present Charter or relating to the powers
and functions of any organs provided for in the present Charter, and,
except as provided in Article 12, may make recommendations to the
Members of the United Nations or to the Security Council or to both on
any such questions or matters”
“discuss any questions”: the UN was initially created as an international
forum to discuss international mattes
ii. Art 11.4: “The powers of the General Assembly set forth in this Article
shall not limit the general scope of Article 10”. This means that the
General Assembly has the competence to discuss any question of the UN
Charter, which should not be interpreted as limited to these examples and
issues mentioned by this article but just about any international issue that
may arise.
Over the years, some critics sustained that the UN had extended too
much from what the Charter originally established. For instance: why
does the UN deal with issues such as aid? The provision of article 11.4
provides the justification of why the UN can actually consider those
issues.
iii. Article 17.1: “The General Assembly shall consider and approve the
budget of the Organization”. This has a very deep political impact: the
budget of the organization means deciding how much money to spend
and specially on what specifically. Not every state has the same
contribution on the UN, it depends on macroeconomic matters: for
instance, the US is the biggest contributor. However, contributing more
does not give a country more power to decide on what it is spent: each
state has one vote regardless of how much they paid.

58
 The budget is the one exception of the UNGA not being able to produce
binding rules: this is hard international law, as states are forced to follow
them.
c) Voting (18-19)
i. Equal representation is recognized in art. 18.1: “Each member of the
General Assembly shall have one vote”
ii. Art. 18.2 makes a distinction of what are considered “important
questions” which require a two-thirds majority: “Decisions of the
General Assembly on important questions shall be made by a two-thirds
majority of the members present and voting. These questions shall
include:
▪ recommendations with respect to the maintenance of international
peace and security, the election of the non-permanent members of the
Security Council,
▪ the election of the members of the Economic and Social Council,
▪ the election of members of the Trusteeship Council in accordance
with paragraph 1 (c) of Article 86,
▪ the admission of new Members to the United Nations,
▪ the suspension of the rights and privileges of membership,
▪ the expulsion of Members,
▪ questions relating to the operation of the trusteeship system,
▪ and budgetary questions”
iii. According to art. 18.3, the majority principle is applied for any other
issues: “Decisions on other questions, including the determination of
additional categories of questions to be decided by a two-thirds majority,
shall be made by a majority of the members present and voting”.
iv. Article 19 also establishes that the UNGA can reduce the capacity of
representation of states when they do not pay: “A Member of the United
Nations which is in arrears in the payment of its financial contributions
to the Organization shall have no vote in the General Assembly if the
amount of its arrears equals or exceeds the amount of the contributions
due from it for the preceding two full years. The General Assembly may,
nevertheless, permit such a Member to vote if it is satisfied that the
failure to pay is due to conditions beyond the control of the Member”.
This is sort of a menace of states who do not pay in time that they could
be deprived of their right to vote; however, this is not actually a common
practise.
d) Procedure (20-22)
De esto no explicó nada así que simplemente os pego los artículos
1. Art. 20: “The General Assembly shall meet in regular annual sessions and in
such special sessions as occasion may require. Special sessions shall be
convoked by the Secretary-General at the request of the Security Council or
of a majority of the Members of the United Nations”.
2. Art. 21: “The General Assembly shall adopt its own rules of procedure. It
shall elect its President for each session”.
3. Art. 22: “The General Assembly may establish such subsidiary organs as it
deems necessary for the performance of its functions”.

59
- Security Council
a) Composition (23): 15 members, 5 of them permanent.
Art. 23:

1. “The Security Council shall consist of fifteen Members of the United

Nations. The Republic of China, France, the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and
the United States of America shall be permanent members of the Security
Council. The General Assembly shall elect ten other Members of the United
Nations to be non-permanent members of the Security Council, due regard
being specially paid, in the first instance to the contribution of Members of
the United Nations to the maintenance of international peace and security
and to the other purposes of the Organization, and also to equitable
geographical distribution.
2. The non-permanent members of the Security Council shall be elected for a
term of two years. In the first election of the non-permanent members after
the increase of the membership of the Security Council from eleven to
fifteen, two of the four additional members shall be chosen for a term of one
year. A retiring member shall not be eligible for immediate re-election.
3. Each member of the Security Council shall have one representative”.

b) Functions and powers (24-26).

i. General functions are listed in art. 24:
1. In order to ensure prompt and effective action by the United Nations,
its Members confer on the Security Council primary responsibility
for the maintenance of international peace and security and agree that
in carrying out its duties under this responsibility the Security
Council acts on their behalf.
2. In discharging these duties, the Security Council shall act in
accordance with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations.
The specific powers granted to the Security Council for the discharge
of these duties are laid down in Chapters VI, VII, VIII, and XII.
3. The Security Council shall submit annual and, when necessary,
special reports to the General Assembly for its consideration.
ii. The binding power of the SC is recognized under art. 25: “The Members
of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the
Security Council in accordance with the present Charter”.
iii. Also, art. 26: “In order to promote the establishment and maintenance of
international peace and security with the least diversion for armaments of
the world's human and economic resources, the Security Council shall be
responsible for formulating, with the assistance of the Military Staff
Committee referred to in Article 47, plans to be submitted to the
Members of the United Nations for the establishment of a system for the
regulation of armaments”.
c) Voting is regulated under art. 27:
1. Each member of the Security Council shall have one vote.
2. Decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters shall be made by an
affirmative vote of nine members.

60
 3. Decisions of the Security Council on all other matters shall be made by an
affirmative vote of nine members including the concurring votes of the
permanent members; provided that, in decisions under Chapter VI, and
under paragraph 3 of Article 52, a party to a dispute shall abstain from
voting

i. Procedural matters refer to no substantive decisions, but rather the

functioning of the own organization, the topics to debate, etc.
ii. Substantive matters: veto power. The practise considers that an
abstention of one of the permanent member does not prevent an
affirmative decision: it requires 9 affirmative votes and no vetoes.
d) Procedure (28-32): de nuevo, os pego los artículos que me manda pero el
profesor ni se dignó a mencionar nada de esto lol
1. Art. 28:
1. “The Security Council shall be so organized as to be able to function
continuously. Each member of the Security Council shall for this
purpose be represented at all times at the seat of the Organization.
2. The Security Council shall hold periodic meetings at which each of
its members may, if it so desires, be represented by a member of the
government or by some other specially designated representative.
3. The Security Council may hold meetings at such places other than
the seat of the Organization as in its judgment will best facilitate its
work”
2. Art. 29: “The Security Council may establish such subsidiary organs as it
deems necessary for the performance of its functions”.
3. Art. 30: “The Security Council shall adopt its own rules of procedure,
including the method of selecting its President”.
4. Art. 31: “Any Member of the United Nations which is not a member of the
Security Council may participate, without vote, in the discussion of any
question brought before the Security Council whenever the latter considers
that the interests of that Member are specially affected”.
5. Art. 32: “Any Member of the United Nations which is not a member of the
Security Council or any state which is not a Member of the United Nations,
if it is a party to a dispute under consideration by the Security Council, shall
be invited to participate, without vote, in the discussion relating to the
dispute. The Security Council shall lay down such conditions as it deems just
for the participation of a state which is not a Member of the United Nations”.
- Economic and Social Council
- Composition. Art. 61.1.: “The Economic and Social Council shall consist of
fifty-four Members of the United Nations elected by the General Assembly”
not a plenary organ; it is composed of 54 members and it has been appointed by
critics to be problematic or rather inefficient due to not having the legitimacy of
a plenary organ. Even though it is connected to Specialised Agencies it does not
have power over them. This is an organ which is important politically but does
not have a lot of power: no self-power (all appointed by the UNGA). Important
for refugees, aid, environment, etc.

61
 The subsidiary bodies are the Regional Comissions, which have specific
geographical scope, as well as Funcional Comissions (e.g.: women, etc.). Each
of them have their own staff and take their own decisions.
- Functions and Powers (62-66)
1. Art. 62.1: “The Economic and Social Council may make or initiate studies
and reports with respect to international economic, social, cultural,
educational, health, and related matters and may make recommendations
with respect to any such matters to the General Assembly to the Members of
the United Nations, and to the specialized agencies concerned”.
2. Arts. 62-66 list some general competences and actions that the ECOSOC
“may” take, but actually this organ has no recognized self-power, as most of
their decisions are subject to the approval of the UNGA. The reason is that
as a non-plenary organ, it is not considered to have the legitimacy to take
decisions that could involve other Member states. However, this organ is
actually very relevant from a political perspective, as it has heavily
influenced the actions of the international community towards issues like
aid, refugees or environmental protection.
- Voting (67). Art. 67:
1. “Each member of the Economic and Social Council shall have one
vote.
2. Decisions of the Economic and Social Council shall be made by a
majority of the members present and voting”.
- Procedure (68-72):
i. Art. 68: “The Economic and Social Council shall set up commissions in
economic and social fields and for the promotion of human rights, and such
other commissions as may be required for the performance of its functions”.
ii. Art. 69: “The Economic and Social Council shall invite any Member of the
United Nations to participate, without vote, in its deliberations on any matter
of particular concern to that Member”.
iii. Art. 70: “The Economic and Social Council may make arrangements for
representatives of the specialized agencies to participate, without vote, in its
deliberations and in those of the commissions established by it, and for its
representatives to participate in the deliberations of the specialized
agencies”.
iv. Art. 71: “The Economic and Social Council may make suitable arrangements
for consultation with non-governmental organizations which are concerned
with matters within its competence. Such arrangements may be made with
international organizations and, where appropriate, with national
organizations after consultation with the Member of the United Nations
concerned”.
v. Art. 72:
1. “The Economic and Social Council shall adopt its own rules of
procedure, including the method of selecting its President.
2. The Economic and Social Council shall meet as required in accordance
with its rules, which shall include provision for the convening of
meetings on the request of a majority of its members”.

62
- International Court of Justice (92 – 96)
a) The ICJ is represented in the Charter but it actually has a very complex
precedential system of rules, so that it has its own Statue as an Annex. Art. 92:
“The International Court of Justice shall be the principal judicial organ of the
United Nations. It shall function in accordance with the annexed Statute, which
is based upon the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice and
forms an integral part of the present Charter”.
b) Art. 93 recognizes the possibility of non-members of the UN becoming parties
of the ICJ, provided that they signed the Statute:
1. All Members of the United Nations are ipso facto parties to the Statute of the
International Court of Justice.
2. A state which is not a Member of the United Nations may become a party to
the Statute of the International Court of Justice on conditions to be
determined in each case by the General Assembly upon the recommendation
of the Security Council.
c) Art. 94 establishes the biding character of the ICJ:
1. Each Member of the United Nations undertakes to comply with the decision
of the International Court of Justice in any case to which it is a party.
2. If any party to a case fails to perform the obligations incumbent upon it
under a judgment rendered by the Court, the other party may have recourse
to the Security Council, which may, if it deems necessary, make
recommendations or decide upon measures to be taken to give effect to the
judgment.
d) Art. 95 established that the ICJ is not the sole international tribunal that UN
Members can resort to: “Nothing in the present Charter shall prevent Members
of the United Nations from entrusting the solution of their differences to other
tribunals by virtue of agreements already in existence or which may be
concluded in the future”.
e) Art. 96 regulates the advisory opinions produced by the ICJ:
1. The General Assembly or the Security Council may request the
International Court of Justice to give an advisory opinion on any legal
question.
2. Other organs of the United Nations and specialized agencies, which may
at any time be so authorized by the General Assembly, may also request
advisory opinions of the Court on legal questions arising within the
scope of their activities.
f) The Secretariat (97 – 101) literalmente no dijo NADA sobre esto así que voy a
pegaros los artículos no puedo hacer más
i. Art. 97: “The Secretariat shall comprise a Secretary-General and such staff
as the Organization may require. The Secretary-General shall be appointed
by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.
He shall be the chief administrative officer of the Organization”.
ii. Art. 98: “The Secretary-General shall act in that capacity in all meetings of
the General Assembly, of the Security Council, of the Economic and Social
Council, and of the Trusteeship Council, and shall perform such other
functions as are entrusted to him by these organs. The Secretary-General
shall make an annual report to the General Assembly on the work of the
Organization”.

63
 iii. Art. 99: “The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security
Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of
international peace and security”.
iv. Art.100:
1. In the performance of their duties the Secretary-General and the staff
shall not seek or receive instructions from any government or from any
other authority external to the Organization. They shall refrain from any
action which might reflect on their position as international officials
responsible only to the Organization.
2. Each Member of the United Nations undertakes to respect the
exclusively international character of the responsibilities of the
Secretary-General and the staff and not to seek to influence them in the
discharge of their responsibilities.
v. Art. 101:
1. The staff shall be appointed by the Secretary-General under
regulations established by the General Assembly.
2. Appropriate staffs shall be permanently assigned to the Economic
and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, and, as required, to
other organs of the United Nations. These staffs shall form a part of
the Secretariat.
3. The paramount consideration in the employment of the staff and in
the determination of the conditions of service shall be the necessity
of securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and
integrity. Due regard shall be paid to the importance of recruiting the
staff on as wide a geographical basis as possible.
g) The Trusteeship Council (86-91) está en el esquema porque la carta lo
menciona pero ya no existe

5. Main achievements of the United Nations

- Preventing conflict
a) Disarmament:
i. Development of a regime composed of international treaties and
creation of organs and agencies for disarmament. The UN regime
does not have the goal to make all states disarm completely, but
they try to make states refrain from developing mass destruction
weapons (e.g.: nuclear weapons) and they try to ensure that states
follow the international conventions on this field.
ii. There are two main issues that this regime has regulated: the legal
arms trade and the ban on nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons.
iii. One of the main successes of the UN on this field is the fact that
the great majority of states are parties to this conventions, with
the important exception of North Korea withdrawing from the
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 2003.
Still, even though some countries still have nuclear weapons and
illegal purchase of weapons is a current international issue,
overall the UN has been fairly successful in the goal of
disarmament.

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 b) Peacekeeping: this refers to the missions of the UN sent to specific regions
with the consent of those territories in order to do this. The UN was not
initially entitled to conduct these missions, but they have started to do it and
continue to do it in order to avoid the scalation of conflicts worldwide.
c) Criminal prosecution: specially concerning crimes against humanity or
crimes against peace. Currently this corresponds to the International
Criminal Court, but before this permanent Court was established by the
Statute of Rome in 1998, the establishment of ad hoc criminal tribunals was
conducted under the UN.
d) Military intervention: the UN has been preventing conflict through this
means. This issue is subject to many critics to is legitimacy, particularly
regarding the intromission of the national sovereignty of its members.
However, defenders of this system argue that the UN is not imposing their
particular sovereign will, but actually ensuring the establishment of an
international rule of law.
- Decolonization
a) After WWII, many founding members of the UN were colonial powers, but
they have ceased to be so. The UN Charter established that any
self-governing states has the right to decolonize.
i. Art. 73: “Members of the United Nations which have or assume
responsibilities for the administration of territories whose peoples
have not yet attained a full measure of self-government recognize
the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of these
territories are paramount, and accept as a sacred trust the
obligation to promote to the utmost, within the system of
international peace and security established by the present
Charter, the well-being of the inhabitants of these territories, and,
to this end:
a. to ensure, with due respect for the culture of the peoples
concerned, their political, economic, social, and educational
advancement, their just treatment, and their protection against
abuses;
b. to develop self-government, to take due account of the
political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the
progressive development of their free political institutions,
according to the particular circumstances of each territory and
its peoples and their varying stages of advancement;
c. to further international peace and security;
d. to promote constructive measures of development, to
encourage research, and to co-operate with one another and,
when and where appropriate, with specialized international
bodies with a view to the practical achievement of the social,
economic, and scientific purposes set forth in this Article; and
e. to transmit regularly to the Secretary-General for information
purposes, subject to such limitation as security and
constitutional considerations may require, statistical and other
information of a technical nature relating to economic, social,

65
 and educational conditions in the territories for which they are
respectively responsible other than those territories to which
Chapters XII and XIII apply”.
ii. Art. 74: “Members of the United Nations also agree that their
policy in respect of the territories to which this Chapter applies,
no less than in respect of their metropolitan areas, must be based
on the general principle of good-neighbourliness, due account
being taken of the interests and well-being of the rest of the
world, in social, economic, and commercial matters”.
b) The UN created a specific regime of decolonization, including
i. Resolution 1514 (XV): Declaration on the Granting of Independence
to Colonial Countries and Peoples. It was adopted by the UNGA on
December 14th, 1960. By this time, the process of decolonization had
already started, but still, it was considered a key milestone in the
decolonization process. The declaration reaffirmed the right to
self-determination and demanded the end of all colonial rule.
ii. Special Committee on Decolonization, also known as C-24. It was
established by the UNGA in 1961 with the objective of ensuring the
application of Resolution 1514 (XV).
- Human Rights
a) The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed by the UNFA
on December 10th, 1948 (GA Resolution 217 A). As all UNGA resolutions,
its legal nature is not binding, but recommendatory (soft law). However, the
resolution has inspired the proliferation of international treaties and
committees protecting human rights, as well as the development of
customary law on the matter (hard law): for instance, the prohibition of
torture is today considered a universal, ius cogens rule.
b) International treaties. Since the Universal Declaration was adopted, treaties
protecting human rights of both global and regional nature.
Some of the most important treaties of legal scope include the International
Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965),
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) or the
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women (1976). As for regional conventions, we can remark the
European Convention on Human Rights (1953).
c) International Committees. There are currently seven UN Human Rights
Committees:
▪ Human Rights Committee.
▪ Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
▪ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
▪ Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.
▪ Committee Against Torture.
▪ Committee on the Rights of the Child.
▪ Committee on Migrant Workers.
Each of these committees is associated to one of the core international
human rights treaties, and their function is to monitor their implementation.

66
 d) UN bodies. Finally, there are other two human rights UN bodies that we
could highlight:
▪ The Human Rights Council: inter-governmental body within the UN
system, made up of 47 member states elected by the UNGA. It is
responsible for the promotion and protection of human rights around
the globe and for addressing situations of human rights violations
and make recommendations about them.
▪ The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: a
department of the Secretariat of the UN to promote the protection of
human rights.
- Stability and development.
a) Global objectives:
i. The UN Millennium Declaration adopted on September 2000 (GA
Resolution 55/2), which set the eight United Nations Millennium
Development Goals for 2015 (MDGs).
ii. The Sustainable Development Agenda, comprising 17 Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs).
b) Sustainability and environmental. Commitment in declarations:
i. 1972 Stockholm
ii. 1985 Ozone Layer Agreement
iii. 1992 Rio de Janeiro
iv. 2002 Johanesbourg
v. 2005 Kioto Agreements
vi. 2016 Paris Agreement
c) Economic development: the UN is committed to make economic growth
compatible with environmental sustainability and human development. In
this sense, the UN system integrates the Bretton Woods institutions (WTO,
FDI and WB) which essentially focus on economic goals; however, the main
difference between the UN and the BW institutions is the UN commitment to
complement economic goals with humanitarian ones. An example of this can
be the creation of the Human Development Index, developed by the UN
Development Programme, which was created as a summary measure of the
development a country considering not only income, but also health and
education.

6. The reform of the UN

- In this sense, we must make a distinction between reforming the UN Charter and the
administrative reform of the UN.
- UN Charter Reform.
a) The UN Charter has been reformed on five occasions:
i. 1965:
a. Art. 23: from 11 in the Security Council to 15 members.
b. Art. 27: from 7 votes to take decisions in the SC to 9.
c. Art. 61: from 18 members in ECOSOC to 27.
ii. 1968. Art. 109: change in the requirements for a General Conference
of Member States for reviewing the Charter.
iii. 1973. Article 61: from 27 members in ECOSOC to 54.

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 b) The procedure to reform the Charter is regulated under the following
articles:
i. Art. 108: “Amendments to the present Charter shall come into force
for all Members of the United Nations when they have been adopted
by a vote of two thirds of the members of the General Assembly and
ratified in accordance with their respective constitutional processes
by two thirds of the Members of the United Nations, including all the
permanent members of the Security Council”. This is a simultaneous
process occurring at the UNGA and at the SC.
ii. Art. 109:
1. “A General Conference of the Members of the United Nations for the
purpose of reviewing the present Charter may be held at a date and
place to be fixed by a two-thirds vote of the members of the General
Assembly and by a vote of any nine members of the Security
Council. Each Member of the United Nations shall have one vote in
the conference.
2. Any alteration of the present Charter recommended by a two-thirds
vote of the conference shall take effect when ratified in accordance
with their respective constitutional processes by two thirds of the
Members of the United Nations including all the permanent members
of the Security Council.
3. If such a conference has not been held before the tenth annual session
of the General Assembly following the coming into force of the
present Charter, the proposal to call such a conference shall be placed
on the agenda of that session of the General Assembly, and the
conference shall be held if so decided by a majority vote of the
members of the General Assembly and by a vote of any seven
members of the Security Council”.

- The UN administrative reform

a) It refers to reforming the structure of the UN system within the UN Charter
b) Critics of the UN call for this kind of reform because they claim that within the
UN system, there are overlapping functions, duplication of effors, weak
coordination, proliferation of mandates, generous compensations, etc.
c) However, the debate arises when trying to establish who should be responsible
for deciding how this process will take place, who will implement it and who
will pay for it. This is the main reason, even though there is quite a consensus on
the coordination problems of the UN institutions, the necessary administrative
reform has yet to take place.

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 LESSON 9: SPECIALIZED AGENCIES.
1. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.
A) UN SYSTEM.
When we talk about specialized agencies we talk about the UN system. The UN system is an
unique governance system that relies on the UN Charter and it is compounded by organs, funds
and programs, specialized agencies, and other bodies. Both the organ and the specialized
agencies
are part of the Charter. The funds and programs could be defined as money allocated to a
specific purpose.
The main difference with the specialized agencies is that these are not created by the UN, they
can be supported by it but they are independent IOs. The have their own constituent treaty, their
own members (that can be the same or not the same as in the UN), their own independent will,
their own decision-making power.
Many specialized agencies existed before the UN, like the ILO or the Universal Costal Union.
They came into the orbit of the UN to better coordinate international policies. The reason why
the old and new specialized agencies remain independent from the UN is to avoid negotiations
in that field to have obstacles. For example, if decisions were to be made in the General
Assembly, negotiations would be really difficult. Therefore, specialization in certain topics
allows more flexibility, more cooperation and faster negotiation.
They have a special status regarding the UN system.
The idea that the UN should reach cooperation with the specialized agencies comes out
basically out of the idea that they both are engaged in the same problems, but with different
strategies.
Comprehensive list of UN Specialized Agencies:
- Food and Agriculture Organization.
- International Civil Aviation Organization.
- International Fund for Agricultural Development.
- International Labor Organization.
- International Monetary Fund.
- International Maritime Organization.
- International Telecommunications Union.
- UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
- +UN Industrial Development Organization.
- World Tourism Organization.
- Universal Postal Union.
- World Health Organization.
- World Intellectual Property Organization.
- World Meteorological Organization.
- World Bank (group).
- … there are up to 60-70 specialized agencies.
http://dagdok.org/

B) DEFINITION.
A specialized agency is an IO that is appointed as such through an agreement with the UN and
its General Assembly. Therefore, each specialized agency can have this status via its

69
constitutional treaty if it contains the agreement, or later through an agreement with the UN
(like UNESCO). By reaching that status, it will have specific powers within the UN’s system.
Specialized agencies are highly dependent on the Economic and Social Council as it is the
organs empowered to coordinate these agencies.
The references to specialized agencies are contained in articles 57 (which relates to the
economic social cooperation) and 63 (which relates to the organ ECOSOC) of the UN Charter.
Therefore, we can say that the term specialized agency has been used since the beginning.
Specialized agencies are highly dependent on the Economic and Social Council as it is the
organs empowered to coordinate these agencies.
“Article 57:
1. The various specialized agencies, established by intergovernmental agreement and
having wide international responsibilities, as defined in their basic instruments, in
economic, social, cultural, educational, health, and related fields, shall be brought into
relationship with the United Nations in accordance with the provisions of Article 63.
2. Such agencies thus brought into relationship with the United Nations are hereinafter
referred to as specialized agencies.”
“Article 63
1. The Economic and Social Council may enter into agreements with any of the agencies
referred to in Article 57, defining the terms on which the agency concerned shall be
brought into relationship with the United Nations. Such agreements shall be subject to
approval by the General Assembly.
2. It may co-ordinate the activities of the specialized agencies through consultation with
and recommendations to such agencies and through recommendations to the General
Assembly and to the Members of the United Nations.”
- International Treaty (UN- SAg)

C) POWERS.
What the treaty between the specialized agencies and the UN does is to allocate or create
powers for both organizations. There are powers created for the specialized agencies withing
the UN system and there are powers created for the UN regarding the specialized agencies. So
they come to a greater deal of cooperation.
Powers for specialized agencies within UN.

• Representation.

They gain representation at some organs or bodies, technical decision-making units. For
example, ECOSOC: specialized agencies have to present an annual report and ECOSOC can
make recommendations about what everyone else is doing so the system becomes more
coordinated.

• International Legality.

Usually, not always, specialized agencies can be able allow to ask for advisory opinion to the
ICJ, and this is a big step for international legality. (The ICJ is not responsible for decing who
has the power to ask for it, but the UNGA.) This has to be made with the permission of the
General Assembly and through it. Privileges and immunities will establish what is the relation

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of the property and the staff of the IO, and the local jurisdiction.
Specialized agencies are probably exempt from taxation, for sure from civil and criminal
matters when exercise in the duty of its powers.

• Privileges & Immunities.

When an IO gains the status of specialized agency, it acquires the privileges and immunities of
the UN system. The Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations of
1946
and the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the Specialized Agencies of 1947
regulate it.

• Economic resources.

Specialized agencies can use some specific resources of the UN. Budgetary and financial
relationships between the UN and the specialized agencies shall be approved by the UNGA
according to article 17 of the UN Charter. Also, it shall examine the administrative budget of
such specialized agencies with a view to making recommendations to the agencies concerned.
They are just recommendations as the specialized agencies are independent. But this control is
necessary to avoid that the specialized agencies spend money on things that are already
managed by technical organs of the UN.
UN within specialized agencies.

• Coordination.

The capacity of the UN in better the coordination of specialized agencies comes from the
regulations from ECOSOC and the UNGA.

• Inspection:

There are a few technical bodies within the UN system that work on a very technical detail.
Some of them are the Chiefs Executive Board, UN Board of Auditors (it controls how the
money has been spent), Office Internal Oversight Services (it makes sure everything in the UN
is working as it should), … These three bodies gain power over the documents and budgets of
the specialized agencies.

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 LESSON 10. European Organizations.
1. Historical background - NO TIENE PINTA DE QUE VAYA A CAER PERO OS LO
DEJO POR SI ACASO

Most International Organizations were created in the second half of the XXth century,
after WWII in a very specific policy environment. In Europe, the Great War had left
behind such tremendous devastation that multiple reconstruction plans were developed
in order to rebuild the continent. In addition, states were haunted by the shadow of the
Cold War, which added tension to an already delicate scenario since Eastern Europe was
under Soviet influence, whereas Western countries were aligned with the US. Under
these circumstances, Western democracies were concerned with the strong appeal of
Eastern policies for the workers, as the Western policies granted a stronger protection
for private property and the strengthening of a capitalist economy. Therefore, Western
communist parties developed their own Western-like approach, merging liberalism and
the protection of Human Rights, as well as sociocultural rights, giving place to the
appearance of Western socialism.

Regardless of this setting, at that time most European states shared the same objectives,
which were to foster Human Rights, promote democracy, expand the rule of law and
free trade. Thus, different organizations appeared, each one emphasizing different
aspects of this shared goal of reconstruction (for instance, the CoE focused on the
protection of Human Rights, whereas the OSCE was primarily concerned with security
matters). With time, these organizations extended their scope and some have become
global today (OECD).

DIJO QUE LO QUE MÁS LE IMPORTABA DE LAS SIGUIENTES

ORGANIZACIONES (puntos 4, 5 y 6) ES: PURPOSE, (FUNCTION), POWERS,
MEMBERSHIP AND REFERENCE TO THE CONSTITUENT TREATY
4. Organization for security and cooperation in Europe (OSCE)

HISTORICAL CONTEXT:

The OSCE traces its origins to the détente phase of the early 1970s, when the
Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) was created to serve as a
multilateral forum for dialogue and negotiation between East and West.

Meeting over two years in Helsinki and Geneva, the CSCE reached agreement on the
Helsinki Final Act, which was signed on 1 August 1975. This document contained a
number of key commitments on politico-military, economic and environmental and
human rights issues that became central to the so-called 'Helsinki process'. It also
established ten fundamental principles (the 'Decalogue') governing the behaviour of
States towards their citizens, as well as towards each other. The product of two years of

72
intense negotiations, the Final Act of 1975 was a turning point in the Cold War: it
proved that some cooperation was possible and offered a holistic approach to security.

The negotiations involved five different types of actors: Warsaw Pact members
following a strict Soviet line (Bulgaria, for example), Warsaw Pact members with a
greater margin of discretion (Hungary, Romania), neutral states (the Holy See,
Switzerland, Yugoslavia), European Economic Community Member States, and NATO
member states, including Canada and the US. Albania was the only non-participant
European country. All the parties benefited from the Final Act in different ways:

● For the Soviet Union, the Final Act confirmed the post-war status quo in Europe.
● For some Warsaw Pact countries, the Final Act provided a safeguard, albeit a
weak one, against future violations of their sovereignty, discouraging the USSR
from repeating its invasions of Hungary (1956) or Czechoslovakia (1968).
● The neutral states considered that the arrangement reinforced their security.
● In the long run, the inclusion of provisions on human rights proved to be
beneficial to the West.

Until 1990, the CSCE functioned mainly as a series of meetings and conferences that
built on and extended the participating States' commitments, while periodically
reviewing their implementation. However, with the end of the Cold War and the fall of
the communist bloc, the Paris Summit of November 1990 set the CSCE on a new
course. In the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, the CSCE was called upon to play its
part in managing the historic change taking place in Europe and responding to the new
challenges of the post-Cold War period, which led to its acquiring permanent
institutions and operational capabilities.

As part of this institutionalization process, the name was changed from the CSCE to the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) by a decision of the
Budapest Summit of Heads of State or Government in December 1994.

The OSCE has its headquarters in Vienna. Every year, the Ministerial Council is hosted
by the state chairing the organisation. The secretary general of the OSCE conducts the
daily work of the organisation, coordinating specialised offices such as the Office for
Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the High Commissioner on
National Minorities (HCNM), the Representative on Freedom of the Media (RFOM),

73
and the Court of Conciliation and Arbitration. The Parliamentary Assembly of the
OSCE is composed of parliamentarians from the Member States.

FOUNDING TREATY:

In August, 1975, the CSCE approved and signed the Helsinki Final Act, which is a
peculiar document since it does not establish the structure of an IOs: there is nothing
related to the IOs budget, membership, obligations, etc. Instead, the Act provides for
three dimensions, known as 'baskets':
1. the political-military dimension: national sovereignty and the promotion of
confidence and security-building measures (CSBM), including, notifications of
manoeuvres, observation, disarmament, etc. The first basket is the most
comprehensive; it includes the famous Helsinki Decalogue: 10 principles that
underline the moral-political nature of the CSCE.
2. the economic-environmental dimension: regional cooperation in areas relating to
economic development and combating environmental degradation.
3. the human dimension: universality of human rights through democratic process
and institutions. This basket provides for family reunification, international
marriages, exchanges between young people, and exchange of information. The
expulsion of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from the USSR in 1974 helped to bring
these human rights issues to prominence in the Western media.

BASIC MISSION AND FUNCTIONS:

With 57 participating states in North America, Europe and Asia, the OSCE is the
world’s largest regional security organization. The OSCE works for stability, peace and
democracy for more than a billion people, through political dialogue about shared
values and through practical work that aims to make a lasting difference.

The OSCE is a forum for political dialogue on a wide range of security issues and a
platform for joint action to improve the lives of individuals and communities. The
organization uses a comprehensive approach to security that encompasses the
politico-military, economic and environmental, and human dimensions. Through this
approach, and with its inclusive membership, the OSCE helps bridge differences and
build trust between states by co-operating on conflict prevention, crisis management
and post-conflict rehabilitation.

74
 1. In military matters, its task is to achieve greater openness, transparency and
co-operation, for which it has developed the world’s most advanced regime of
arms control and confidence-building measures.

2. Economic and environmental issues are also key factors in promoting security.
Promoting good governance, tackling corruption, raising environmental
awareness, sharing natural resources and managing waste in an environmentally
friendly manner are some of the ways in which the OSCE contributes.

3. Human rights and fundamental freedoms are the foundation of a stable society.
The OSCE helps its participating States to build democratic institutions; to hold
free and democratic elections; to ensure respect for human rights, freedom of the
media, the rights of national minorities and the rule of law; and to promote
tolerance and non-discrimination.

On a broader level, the OSCE addresses those security challenges that pose a
transnational threat, such as climate change, terrorism, radicalization and violent
extremism, organized crime, cybercrime and drug and arms trafficking, as well as
human trafficking.

HIGHLIGHTS:

Today, the work OSCE highlights in three areas: supporting democracy and fair
elections, monitoring conflicts and building confidence on the continent.

1. Building confidence on the continent

One of the main tasks of the OSCE is to provide mechanisms for monitoring European
confidence building and security measures. Since the mid-1970s, the OSCE member
states have concluded various agreements, committing them to reducing nuclear and
conventional weapons, and providing for information sharing and mutual observation.

A. The Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (TCFE) was adopted just before
the disbanding of the Soviet Union. It limits the level of troops and certain
military equipment that the parties can have in Europe (the treaty imposes limits
on five elements).

75
 B. The Vienna Document, adopted in 1990, commits OSCE countries to sharing
information with one another once a year on numbers of troops and weapons.
They are also obliged to notify large-scale military drills in advance and allow
inspections of three military sites every year.

C. The final pillar of the OSCE's security regime, the Open Skies Treaty, is the last
branch of the security regime. It allows for observation flights, setting out the
numbers, points of entry and equipment to be used.

All three parts of the pan-European security regime are today threatened by growing
competition and mistrust between Russia on the one hand, and NATO member states on
the other.

2. Monitoring conflicts in Europe

Since 1992, the OSCE has carried out 27 field missions and other activities on the
ground. The OSCE plays a key role in the resolution of conflicts in the Balkans nd
frozen conflicts in the post-Soviet space like Ukraine. The OSCE Minsk Group,
co-chaired by France, Russia, and the US, has provided the main conflict-resolution
framework since 1992. The group organises informal and secret negotiations between
the parties.

OSCE in Ukraine

The Ukraine crisis is a power struggle between factions within Ukraine. One of the
factions wants to align with the European Union and the other with Russia. Between
2014–2018, a military conflict between Ukrainian soldiers and Russian-backed
separatists continued in eastern Ukraine. More than 10,000 people were killed.

The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) was deployed on 21 March
2014, following a request to the OSCE by Ukraine’s government and a consensus
decision by all 57 OSCE participating States. The SMM is an unarmed, civilian
mission, present on the ground 24/7 in all regions of Ukraine. Its main tasks are to
observe and report in an impartial and objective way on the situation in Ukraine; and to
facilitate dialogue among all parties to the crisis.

3. Supporting democracy

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Originally focused on election observation, OSCE democracy support now includes
broader instruments relating to political participation and minority rights. For example,
OSCE was instrumental in helping Estonia and Latvia to formulate a policy toward their
Russian minorities in the 1990s. Today, the OSCE is a key player in promoting
democratic and transparent elections, through its OSCE Office for Democratic
Institutions and Human Rights. The OSCE has also been promoting freedom of speech
and fight against hate speech through its Representative on Freedom of the Media
(RFM) since 1998.

5. The Council of Europe (CoE, 1949)

The Council of Europe is an international organisation in Strasbourg which comprises

47 countries of Europe. It was set up to promote democracy and protect human rights
and the rule of law in Europe.
Main focus: abolition of death penalty, strengthening of HHRR, non - discrimination
and fight against racism, gender equality, protection of children’s rights, upholding
freedom of expression, defense of cultural diversity...
It is important to remember that the Council of Europe is not part of the treaties but a
sponsor.
Statute of the Council of Europe: (London, 05/05/1949)
- The Council of Europe has been created after the Second World War in order to
achieve a greater unity between its members for the purpose of safeguarding and
realising the ideals and principles which are their common heritage and
facilitating their economic and social progress.
- Any European State may become a member of the Council of Europe as far as it
accepts the principles of the rule of law and of the enjoyment by all persons
within its jurisdiction of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

According to the Statute, this aim shall be pursued through the two organs of the
Council:
1. the Committee of Ministers : the organ which acts on behalf of the Council of
Europe. Each member shall be entitled with one representative
2. the Parliamentary Assembly : the deliberative organ of the Council of Europe. It
shall debate matters within its competence under this Statute and present its
conclusions, in the form of recommendations, to the Committee of Ministers.
3. Both these organs are served by a Secretariat directed by the Secretary General.

By discussion of questions of common concern and by agreements and common

action in economic, social, cultural, scientific, legal and administrative matters

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 and in the maintenance and further realisation of human rights and fundamental
freedoms.
Moreover, the Statute provides for the financing of the Council, grants to the
Representatives the immunities and privileges necessary for the fulfilment of
their functions, set up the seat of the Organisation in Strasbourg and that the
official languages of the Council of Europe are English and French.

---------------
Spanish case: Spain joined the Council of Europe 24/11/1977 after Franco’s death but
when democracy was not yet really consolidated. They were allowed to sign even
before the Constitution was published, this entailed a risk for the Council of Europe,
which could not have non democratic members. Spain was the only case for which the
Council of Europe allowed entrance before having a consolidated democracy.
----------------
*The countries under the USSR dominance did not join until the fall of the block. It was
a real political statement to take part in the Council of Europe.

The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
- The second most important treaty. -
- The "European Convention on Human Rights" sets forth a number of
fundamental rights and freedoms (right to life, prohibition of torture, prohibition
of slavery and forced labour, right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, no
punishment without law, right to respect for private and family life, freedom of
thought, conscience and religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly
and association, right to marry, right to an effective remedy, prohibition of
discrimination). More rights are granted by additional protocols to the
Convention
- Parties undertake to secure these rights and freedoms to everyone within their
jurisdiction.
- The Convention also establishes an international enforcement machinery
- the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (art. 19)
1. deals with individual and inter-State petitions.
2. at the request of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of
Europe, the Court may also give advisory opinions concerning
the interpretation of the Conventions and the protocols thereto
3. The Committee of Ministers has also a power to ask the Court
for an interpretation of a judgment.

The parties to a case must abide by the judgments of the Court

and take all necessary measures to comply with them. The
Committee of Ministers supervises the execution of judgments.
The Secretary General may request Parties to provide
explanations on the manner in which their domestic law ensures
the effective implementation of the Convention

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6. Organization for economic cooperation and development (OECD, 1960)

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is an

international organisation in which governments work together to find solutions to
common challenges, develop global standards, share experiences and identify best
practices to promote better policies for better lives.

Its origins go back to 1948, when the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation
(OEEC) was formed to administer American and Canadian aid in the framework of the
Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe after World War II. This funding would
be provided to European countries under one essential stipulation: Countries had to
work together to decide how to allocate and prioritise resources. Later, in the 1950s, the
OEEC provided the framework for negotiations aimed at determining conditions for
setting up a European Free Trade Area, to bring the European Economic Community
and the other OEEC members together on a multilateral basis, and in 1958, a European
Nuclear Energy Agency was set up under the OEEC.
However, by the end of the decade, with Europe effectively rebuilt, some leading
countries believed that the OEEC had outlived its purpose. Nevertheless, it could be
adapted to fulfill a more global mission. Thus, on 14 December 1960, the Convention
transforming OEEC into OECD was signed, entering into force in 1961. Its 1st article
established that “the aims of the OECD [...] shall promote policies designed:
a) to achieve the highest sustainable economic growth and employment and a rising
standard of living in Member countries, while maintaining financial stability, and thus to
contribute to the development of the world economy;
b) to contribute to sound economic expansion in Member as well as non-member
countries in the process of economic development.”
This Convention also extended membership for non-European states: firstly, the US and
Canada. Moreover, a resolution was reached in January 1960 which decided that the
body would not deal only with European and Atlantic economic issues, but also devise
policies that would assist less developed countries. Nowadays, it encompases 37
member countries and works in alliance with over 100 economies.
In order to satisfy its new role, the OECD progressively introduced new agencies such
as the OECD Development Centre (1961), the International Energy Agency (IEA,
1974), and Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering.
The principal organs from the OECD are:
- Council → it is composed by representatives of the member-states and the EU,
and it is in charge of the strategic direction of the organization. It is chaired by
the Secretary-General, although decisions are taken mostly by consensus. This is
a very relevant matter, as the OECD does not have the power to enforce its
decisions. However, it is recognized as a highly influential publisher of

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 economic data and international reports, as well as annual evaluations and
rankings of member countries such as PISA (the OECD’s Programme for
International Student Assessment which measures the abilities of children in
different fields of education around the globe).
- Committees → formed by experts, partner economies and other relevant
stakeholders that share policy experience, develop standards and innovate and
review policy implementation and its impact.
- Secretariat → Responsible for the recollection of data to provide analysis and
formulate proposals to inform the Committee discussions.
In addition, the OECD collaborates with representatives from government,
business, labour, civil society and academia through consultations and regular
exchanges.

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 LESSONS 11 AND 12: THE EUROPEAN UNION

The European Union is one of the most paradigmatic IOs due to the fact that it manages
sovereign power of its member states. This is, its member states have yielded to the
organization certain sovereign powers. Therefore, the EU is an international agent
purely. Contrary to the model of the UN which relies on the acceptance of its member
states to enforce decisions, executive power in the EU is more automatic, as whenever
the EU adopts a regulation it has immediate power within states.
However, member states have only given a part of their sovereignty to the EU, not all of
it; so at certain moments there can be a concurrency of powers in order to deal with the
same affairs leading to incoherence in policies and practices.
In addition, it must be noted that the EU needs to be recognized by third parties, a
requirement that is not necessary for its member states.

1. ORIGINS
The European Union origins are to be found after WWII, in an European continent
devastated by the war, buried in a political and economic decadence without precedent.
In this context, European states, which had functioned independently until that moment,
decided to cooperate through the formation of different IOs with the aim of avoiding the
repetition of the conflict. Therefore, although the EU presents numerous goals such as
trade liberalization and the efficient management of services, its final purpose is the
promotion of peace.
The OECD (1948) and NATO (1949) were created in the first place, with the aim of
fostering economic recovery and maintaining security of the region with the aid of
transatlantic alliances. In addition, European states chose to introduce new forms of
inter-state cooperation purely within Europe, and the Council of Europe (1949) and the
OSCE (1994) were born.
Finally, in 1950 Robert Schuman announced in his famous Declaration speech the plan
that he had designed along with Jean Monnet to unify the European industries of steel
and coal produced in the main central European states: Belgium, France, Western
Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands; and created the ECSC (European
Coal and Steel Community) since, at that time, those elements were the main ones used
for weapon production. Thus, by sharing a common management, they ensured that
whenever there was a mismanagement that would serve as a warning for the community
that a certain state was preparing for conflict.
Later on, in 1957, these founding members signed the Treaties of Rome and created the
European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community
(Euroatom). It was not until 1992 that the European Union received its current name,
with the Treaty of Maastricht. This treaty meant the deepening of the political
integration of the Economic Communities and the IO expanded its scope to the
cooperation of its member states in the fields of foreign policy and collective security,
and justice and foreign affairs. This central treaty was revisioned in 1999 by the Treaty
of Amsterdam, and in 2003 by the Treaty of Nice, which brought institutional reforms.

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Moreover, it is important to note that in 2004 the European Council approved the draft
for the European Constitution. However, this was not ratified by all the members, since
it was rejected by France and the Netherlands. Thus, it never came into force.
More recently, in 2007 the Treaty of Lisbon merged the European Union and the
European Community into a single union, and ever since the law of the EU is regulated
by the three central treaties: the Treaty on the European Union, the Treaty on the
Functioning of the European Union and the Euratom.
From there onwards the EU has been expanding: geographically, since new members
have accessed the constituent treaty; in the scope of its subject matters, as its regulations
have expanded to numerous fields; and legally, creating various treaties and
amendments for its member states.

2. MAIN STAGES IN THE INTEGRATION PROCESS

● Membership: In order to become a member, states must comply with the
Copenhagen criteria (which were officially written in 1993, although they
already were a customary norm within the EU before). These criteria include:
a. Respect for fundamental freedoms and human rights
b. Having a free market
c. Willingness to accept the EU law
In order to access the EU, the state must obtain the unanimous approval of the
member-states of the EU (e.g. Catalonia would need full unanimity to become
independent and still be part of the EU).
The membership has evolved from the very first members: France, Germany,
Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg and Italy; to the current 27 member
states (UK ceased to be a member) who have joined through treaties of
accession which introduced the provisional legislation that would be applied in
this countries during their integration process:
★ Treaty of Accession of Croatia (2012)
★ Treaty of Accession of the Republic of Bulgaria and Romania (2005)
★ Treaty of Accession of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia,
Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia (2003)
★ Treaty of Accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden (1994)
★ Treaty of Accession of Spain and Portugal (1985)
★ Treaty of Accession of Greece (1979)
★ Treaty of Accession of Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom
(1972)

● Policies: The original policy that was implemented after WWII aside of the
common management coal and steel was constructed on 3 pillars:
a. Single market
b. Common foreign and security policy

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 d. Police and judicial cooperation
Nevertheless, this structure has been deprecated as some other liberties have
been added, deriving from the single market, known as the “four european liberties”:
which consist of the Free movement of...
1. Services (no obstacles to move across borders)
2. Goods (no obstacles to move across borders)
3. People (to move freely within borders of member states)
4. Capital/money
Despite the remarkable importance of the economic integration of the EU, it must be
noted that it is a project which also aspires to political union. Consequently, it is an IO
which is deploying sovereign power of its member states, as this is needed to fulfill its
purposes. The basic idea is that the EU law is autonomous, and not part of any ordinary
international treaty. This principle was recognized by ECJ in 1960s rulings:
a. Van Gend & Loos → the Court stated that the functioning of the
Common Market was directly concerned with the interested parties, and
therefore that the founding Treaty was not a simple agreement which
constituted mutual obligations for States. This was reaffirmed by the fact
that the Preamble of the Treaty refers not only to the governments but
also to the “peoples”. The conclusion drawn is that “the Community
constitutes a new legal order of international law for the benefit of which
states have limited their sovereign powers” and that the “subjects
comprise not only Member States but also their nationals”.
b. Costa vs Enel → “the EEC Treaty has created its own legal system which
… became an integral part of the legal systems of the Member States and
which their courts are bound to apply” and “the Treaty carries with it a
permanent limitation of their sovereign rights, against which a
subsequent unilateral act incompatible with the concept of the
Community cannot prevail.”
Through these rulings, the Court enhanced European law, considering it more than a
simple ordinary treaty. However, to our take, this interpretation is somehow problematic
in the sense that, if IOs’ founding treaties were interpreted in a different way due to the
functionalist theory, how should we interpret the EU treaties? Do they still relate to a
certain number of organs who fulfill certain functions to achieve a final purpose or shall
we make a different interpretation?
Different interpretation of EU law has traditionally fallen under the following two main
perspectives:
1. Federalist → Argue that final sovereignty always remains in the member
States, and that the yielding of sovereignty to the EU is just temporary.
As a matter of illustration, the USA is a federalist state since the regions
that form it may claim back their power. Power is formed bottom-up.
2. Sovereignty of the EU → the EU is an ever-growing organization that
absorbs more and more power and it has the permission of the states to
deploy sovereign power according to their own legality. Opposed to
federalism, Spain is a state with central sovereignty. This is, although the

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 regions and the central government both have powers, sovereignty
remains within the state as a whole, in the Spanish people. Power comes
top-down.
The ultimate questions that differentiates these two interpretations is: Where does the
final decision remain: within the state or the organization? This is a lasting discussion,
and the BREXIT has brought new perspectives on this issue since, although the EU
treaty contained a specific provision for withdrawal of member states, this option was
never truly considered. Thus, the debate currently appears to lean towards the federalist
perspective, although the sovereignty perspective has not been completely abandoned,
as the rest of states have remained within the EU.

Therefore, the corollary of this discussion can be summarized in the question: Where
are we heading within the EU integration process: towards a newly created state or
towards a federation of European states? In any case, this is a purely academic debate
which would not affect the everyday functioning of the EU.

3. THE EU AS A UNION OF LAW

The European Union as any other IO is treaty-based. Currently there are two main
treaties, along with numerous subsidiary treaties that the member states have accessed
into in order to better fulfill the purpose of the IO.
● Treaties → They show awareness on the “mission-creep” of IOs. Consequently,
they provide a high level of legal certainty due to their clarity. The most relevant
ones are:
1. Treaty of Paris (1951, entry into force in 1952) → European Coal and
Steel Community
a. Signed by y the six founding states (Belgium, Germany, France,
Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands)
b. Inspired by the Declaration of 9 May 1950 of the French Foreign
Minister Robert Schuman, who had planned this integration along
with Jean Monnet.
2. Treaties of Rome (1957) → European Economic Community (EEC),
European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom or EAEC).
3. Treaty of Maastricht (1992) → Foundation treaty of the European Union,
formerly known as the “Treaty on European Union”
a. Entailed a crucial step in the process towards European
integration with provisions for a shared European citizenship, for
the eventual introduction of a single currency, and (with less
precision) for common foreign and security policies.
4. Treaty of Amsterdam (1999) and Nice (2003) → structural reforms.
5. Draft Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (2004)

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 a. Intended to turn the EU and the European Community into a
single European Union that would operate upon the basis of a
single constitutional treaty.
b. However, this attempt failed due to the lack of ratification by
France and the Netherlands.
6. Treaty of Lisbon (2007) → formal away from the idea of a European
constitution
a. Made fundamental changes to the existing EU treaties in order to
strengthen the EU’s capacity to act within and outside the Union,
increase its democratic legitimacy and enhance the efficiency of
EU action overall.
b. The main points of the treaty include the delimitation of
competences between the Union and the Member States:

● Powers → The powers of the EU are very broad and the key about their
distribution is that the EU has:
a. Exclusive conferred power over certain subjects: e.g customs, common
markets, etc. This is hard-law power which must be explicitly conferred
by states (not implicit nor inherent powers)
b. Shared competence among the EU and member states, where the EU has
a saying in the decision-making process but does not take the final
decision, which corresponds to member states.
● Subsidiarity principle → states that the EU only acts in those
competences when it is the best suitable actor to do so. This calls
for the necessity of the EU to establish the framework but not the
more detailed rules that would regulate certain subjects.
● Proportionality principle → claims that the EU needs to act
accordingly to what is expected from it and no more.
c. Power to coordinate the policies of member states that are not a shared or
exclusive power, through soft-law mechanisms.
d. Some means to foster cooperation, acting through soft-law mechanisms.

● L’Acquis Communautaire: (El acervo comunitario)

a. This is the basic idea that all the treaties and regulations, directives,
whatever legislative act, decision, etc. needs to be understood as a
unitary system.
b. If the EU is a union of law it means that it cannot hide any
incoherences among what it is saying. There cannot be any clash of
laws, there must always be an instrument that guarantees that new laws
add up to a common background of legality without creating
contradictions.

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4. MAIN INSTITUTIONS AND RULES
● Institutions:
- European Council:
a. Formed by the Heads of States and Government, as well as the President
from the European Council, the President of the European Commission
and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and
Security Policy.
b. It defines the overall political directions and priorities of the EU. For
instance, it is where the BREXIT negotiations took place. However, it
does not have legislative power!
c. It established the foreign and security policy of the EU, according to its
strategic concerns.
d. Generally decisions are taken by consensus (except where the treaties
provide otherwise)

- Council of the European Union

a. It is the body where the governments of the member states are
represented, as this is where the ministers meet. Whenever there is a
council there needs to be a specific topic to be addressed, the minister
that deals with the subject would be the representative of that state.
b. Every six months, a member state obtains the Presidency.
c. It legislates, coordinates the economic policies of the member states,
promotes the foreign policy and collective security, fosters agreements
between the EU and third parties and elaborates the project for the
budget.
d. Most of its decisions are taken by qualified majority. However, the most
sensible topics are chosen by unanimity, and a simple majority is
required for procedimental votes.

- EU Parliament
a. Represent the citizens of the EU.
b. Until 1979 the deputies conforming it were deputies from the national
parliaments. Nevertheless, the Parliament finally obtained its full
democratic legitimacy in 1979 with the first European Elections which
are held every 5 years.
c. Functions:
- legislative: passing EU laws together with the European Council
based on the European Commission proposals, deciding on
international agreements, deciding on enlargements….
- supervisory: examining citizens’ petitions and setting up
inquiries, election observations, electing the Commission
president and approving the Commission as a body, granting
discharge, discussing monetary policy with the ECB

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 - budgetary: establishing the EU budget together with the
Council. approving EU’s long-term budget “Multiannual
Financial Framework”

- European Commision
a. It is formed by 27 members including the President, one for each
member state.
b. It is the basic executive power of the EU. It promotes the EU legislation
(as it is the sole initiator of legislation), safeguards the EU law and
represents the EU internationally.

- European Court of Justice (ECJ)

a. It is the jurisdictional organ of the EU.
b. It oversees the legality within the EU as it interprets, settles disputes and
develops EU legislation. Moreover, it ensures that law is applied the
same way in all EU countries.
c. It is divided between a General Court formed by 44 judges, and the
Court of Justice.

- EU Agencies (very numerous, such as the EMA):

- These are not IOs themselves, but instead they are created through the
European Council regulation, which creates these decentralised bodies to
accomplish specific tasks. Each agency has its own legal personality.

- European Central Bank

a. It is an independent institution in charge of the Euro, as it cannot accept
any orders coming from other institutions nor the governments of the
member states.

- European Court of Auditors (ECA)

a. It is formed by 27 members, one for each member state. The Council
names the members for a 6 years period, after being proposed by the
member states.
b. It examines the legality and regularity of EU revenues and expenses, and
guarantees its appropriate management and the execution of the budget.

● Rules
- Primary sources of law: Constituent treaties, as well as the following ones
which include rules for EU institutions, decision-making and relationship
between the EU and its member states.
- Secondary rules:
a. Regulations: Regulations are legal acts that apply automatically and
uniformly to all EU countries as soon as they enter into force, without

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 needing to be transposed into national law. They are binding in their
entirety on all EU countries.
+ May come in handy when also developing shared competences
not only for exclusive competences
+ regulations are not only for exclusive competences
b. Directives: require EU countries to achieve a certain result, but leave
them free to choose how to do so (framework). EU countries must adopt
measures to incorporate them into national law (transpose) in order to
achieve the objectives set by the directive. National authorities must
communicate these measures to the European Commission.
+ could be use to e.g. develop an exclusive competence
c. Decisions: shall be binding in its entirety. A decision which specifies
those to whom it is addressed shall be binding only on them (do not have
a broad scope).
d. Opinions: is an instrument that allows the EU institutions to make a
statement, without imposing any legal obligation on the subject of the
opinion. An opinion has no binding force.
e. Recommendations: allow the EU institutions to make their views
known and to suggest a line of action without imposing any legal
obligation on those to whom it is addressed. They have no binding force.

- Each type of rule can be used to regulate any kind of competence power
(exclusive, shared, etc).

● Decision-making
1. Ordinary legislative procedure (co-decision)→ in order to pass a piece of legislation,
it must count with the approval of both the citizens (represented by the Parliament) and
the governments (represented by the Council of the European Union):
- The Commission creates a draft after it has done some research (consulted the
population and other organs, undergone due diligence) in order to propose a
piece of legislation.
- That piece goes to the EU parliament and the Council of the European Union
that must agree to the draft. In case they do not support it, the process would
comprise 2 or even 3 readings, as well as a conciliation procedure.

2. Extraordinary procedures → in which the EU Parliament would lack the capacity to

veto the decision, since it would simply be consulted.

(no dijo nada más y se puso a ver webs así que… entendemos que no va a explicar
estos apartados):

5. MAIN POLITICS
6. EXTERNAL ACTION
7. THE EUROPEAN UNION AT PRESENT

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 LESSON 13: AMERICAN ORGANIZATIONS

2. Organization of American States

The Organization of American States is the world’s oldest regional organization, dating back to
the First International Conference of American States, held in Washington, D.C., from October
1889 to April 1890. That meeting approved the establishment of the International Union of
American Republics, and the stage was set for the weaving of a web of provisions and
institutions that came to be known as the inter-American system, the oldest international
institutional system.

The OAS came into being in 1948 with the signing in Bogotá, Colombia, of the Charter of
the OAS, which entered into force in December 1951. It was subsequently amended by the
Protocol of Buenos Aires, signed in 1967, which entered into force in February 1970; by the
Protocol of Cartagena de Indias, signed in 1985, which entered into force in November 1988; by
the Protocol of Managua, signed in 1993, which entered into force in January 1996; and by the
Protocol of Washington, signed in 1992, which entered into force in September 1997.

The Organization was established in order to achieve among its member states—as stipulated in
Article 1 of the Charter—"an order of peace and justice, to promote their solidarity, to
strengthen their collaboration, and to defend their sovereignty, their territorial integrity, and
their independence."

Today, the OAS brings together all 35 independent states of the Americas and constitutes the
main political, juridical, and social governmental forum in the Hemisphere. In addition, it has
granted permanent observer status to 69 states, as well as to the European Union (EU).

The Organization uses a four-pronged approach to effectively implement its essential purposes,
based on its main pillars: democracy, human rights, security, and development.

Highlight regarding HHRR:

1969 American convention on Human Rights (Pact of San José) → base of the Interamerican
Court of Rights

Regarding the Constituent Charter:

Purposes:Art. 2:

a) To strengthen the peace and security of the continent;

b) To promote and consolidate representative democracy, with due respect for the principle
of nonintervention;

c) To prevent possible causes of difficulties and to ensure the pacific settlement of disputes
that may arise among the Member States;

d) To provide for common action on the part of those States in the event of aggression;

e) To seek the solution of political, juridical, and economic problems that may arise
among them;

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 f) To promote, by cooperative action, their economic, social, and cultural development;

g) To eradicate extreme poverty, which constitutes an obstacle to the full democratic

development of the peoples of the hemisphere; and

h) To achieve an effective limitation of conventional weapons that will make it possible to

devote the largest amount of resources to the economic and social development of the
Member States.

Members: art. 4:
All American States that ratify the present Charter are Members of the Organization

art. 9: (alberto dijo que era importante)

A Member of the Organization whose democratically constituted government has been
overthrown by force may be suspended from the exercise of the right to participate in the
sessions of the General Assembly, the Meeting of Consultation, the Councils of the
Organization and the Specialized Conferences as well as in the commissions, working groups
and any other bodies established.

a) The power to suspend shall be exercised only when such diplomatic initiatives
undertaken by the Organization for the purpose of promoting the restoration of representative
democracy in the affected Member State have been unsuccessful;

- Chapter: fundamental rights

- Chapter V: pacific settlement of disputes. One of the big principles. whentener there is a
conflict that can be settled by negotiation, the OAE can be used as a forum for
discussion. This redirects whatever dispute to the ICJ. Case: Chile vs. Bolivia: the
obligation to negotiate access to the pacifi ocean. This dispute made its way to the ICJ:
the Court said that under PIL there is a negotiation, not to guarantee the access.
- The Organs. Article 53:
The Inter American Commission of HHRR: charged with overseeing american
policies regarding HR. It is seated in Washington and it is the Head of the
Inter-American system of HR.
Regulated under Chapter XV: Article 106, invites states to create a Convention: the
Convention of 69 (20 years later), which got into force in 1978.
- Specialized organizations
- Convention of HR:
a) Article I: obligation to respect.
1. The States Parties to this Convention undertake to respect the rights and
freedoms recognized herein and to ensure to all persons subject to their
jurisdiction the free and full exercise of those rights and freedoms, without any
discrimination for reasons of race, color, sex, language, religion, political or
other opinion, national or social origin, economic status, birth, or any other
social condition.
2. For the purposes of this Convention, "person" means every human being
b) Chapter II: civil and political rights → right to life, to humane treatment,
freedom from enslavement...

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 c) Chapter III: economic, social and cultural rights → not as well developed
due to political reasons. Both perspectives of HHRR are integral and necessary
for equal protection (civil and political and economic social and cultural)
d) Chapter VI: competent organs
Article 33: The following organs shall have competence with respect to matters
relating to the fulfillment of the commitments made by the States Parties to this
Convention:
a. the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, referred to as "The
Commission;"
b. the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, referred to as "The Court."
e) Chapter VII: the Inter-American Commission of HHRR
f) Chapter VIII regulated the Inter-American Court of HHRR( 7 judges).
Article 62: (the State Parties of this Convention may ratify or recognize the
jurisdiction of the Court)
1. A State Party may, upon depositing its instrument of ratification or adherence
to this Convention, or at any subsequent time, declare that it recognizes as
binding, ipso facto, and not requiring special agreement, the jurisdiction of the
Court on all matters relating to the interpretation or application of this
Convention.

Back to the Constituent Charter:

- article 143:
“The present Charter shall remain in force indefinitely, but may be denounced by any
Member State upon written notification to the General Secretariat, which shall
communicate to all the others each notice of denunciation received. After two years
from the date on which the General Secretariat receives a notice of denunciation, the
present Charter shall cease to be in force with respect to the denouncing State, which
shall cease to belong to the Organization after it has fulfilled the obligations arising
from the present Charter”

This has actually happened:

- On April 28th 2017, the Secretary General of the Organization received a note from
Venezuela which expressed the decision to denounce the OAE. It included a letter from
Nicolás Maduro. The reason was that OAS did not provide enough coverage from the
US’s actions against Venezuela: a set of economic sanctions from the US against
Maduro’s regime.
- In 2019, close to the two years of the denouncing process, there is a note from Juan
Guaidó, as the President of the Venezuelan National Assembly, asking to remain in the
organization. This is a conflict of international recognition: even though Venezuela’s
government had until recently been recognized as democratically elected, after the last
elections part of the international community (i.e. the US and the EU) considered that
the elections had been fraudulent and they recognized Juan Guaidó instead.
- Now, does this mean that Venezuela is back? Right now, Venezuela is considered a
member of the organization, but is represented as an Ambassador of the National
Assembly (allegedly presided by Guaidó) and not by the government of Maduro. As a
result, the government of Maduro is not recognized in the organization but the
representative of an institution with no actual political power is represented.

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