Using a Shield as a Sword: Are International Organizations Abusing Their Immunity?

The starting point for this paper is that IOs are as subjects of international law. Since IOs do not control territory or a population and so always operate within the jurisdiction of one of their member states, they are vulnerable to interference by their member states. In order to mitigate this risk, IOs have been granted qualified immunity, usually referred to as functional immunity, from the jurisdiction of their member states. For most of the twentieth century, this grant of functional immunity made sense for two reasons. First, the founding states envisaged that IOs would have limited capacity to act on their own initiative. They would only undertake activity on the territory of a member state or involving the citizens of that state at the invitation of its government and in cooperation with its officials. This arrangement ensured that the IOs respected the sovereignty of the state. The citizens of the state did not have a direct mechanism for holding IOs accountable. However, if the citizens did not approve of an IO’s actions, they could petition their government to deny the IO access to the state or to use the levers of institutional governance to hold the IO accountable. The second reason why functional immunity made sense was that individuals were not generally recognized as subjects of international law. This meant that individuals had no international legal standing. Any wrong that an IO caused was, under international law, an injury to their state, who could then bring a claim against the IO. This paper argues that with the passage of time both of these reasons have lost their validity. First, IOs have expanded the scope of their activities to include operations that involve exerting direct authority over and/or directly impacting the lives of individual citizens and communities. As a result of these expanded operations and the fact that their functional immunity has not been reduced, IOs are currently operating with less public accountability than governments. Second, developments in human rights law since the Second World War mean that individuals now have rights that are cognizable under international law. One of these rights is the right to an effective remedy. IOs cannot credibly continue to advocate that their member states should respect human rights and practice good governance while they fail to respect their stakeholders’ right of access to an effective remedy. This can be seen most clearly in regard to the activities of the United Nations (U.N.), the World Bank Group (WBG), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In order to make this argument, this paper is divided into five sections. The first is a brief overview of the doctrine of IO immunity. The second discusses the evolution in IO operations and its implications for IO immunity. The third is a discussion of the right to an effective remedy as a principle of customary international law. The fourth considers how this principle should be applied to IOs. The fifth concludes that the doctrine of immunity is no longer appropriate without adaptation

Lessons From The NGO Campaign Against The Second Review Of The World Bank Inspection Panel: A Participant\u27s Perspective

This case study of the Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) campaign against the second review of the World Bank\u27s Inspection Panel is intended as an example of the impact international civil society can have on international financial institutions (IFIs)

How Well Does the G20 Reflect African Interests and Priorities?: Some Thoughts Following the Los Cabos, Mexico Summit

The leaders of the G20 countries have now held seven summits -- enough to begin critically evaluating how well the G20 serves the interest of specific sub-parts of the international community. The purpose of this paper is to assess how well the G20 responds to African interests. It is divided into three parts. The first is a brief description of the most recent summit, held on June 18-19, 2012 in Los Cabos, Mexico. The second part is a brief discussion of the criteria that will be used in this evaluation. The third part is an assessment of the G20 against these criteria

The Inspection Panel and International Law

This essay argues that the creation of the Inspection Panel (Panel) was an important international legal development. It was the first time that an international organization established a mechanism that enabled those communities and individuals who claimed they had been harmed by the decisions and actions of the international organization to hold the organization accountable. The creation of the Panel also promoted the role of non-state actors in making the soft international law that is applicable to the international financing of development projects. This essay will discuss each of these developments before drawing some conclusions about the Panel and international law

Reconciliation Financing: An Innovative Approach to Poverty, Inequality, and Social Conflict

This paper focuses on the problem of addressing historical injustices and raising finance for small scale revenue generating projects that benefit those victims of these past injustices who still lack access to jobs, services and opportunities. These projects always experience funding problems. They are considered both too rich for grant funding because they generate a stream of revenues but too poor for commercial funding because either they are too small or they generate an insufficient income stream to be attractive to commercial funders. In proposing a debt-based solution to these funding problems, the paper proposes 3 principles of reconciliation financing

Differing Conceptions of Development and the Content of International Development Law

International development law is the branch of international law that deals with the rights and duties of states and other actors in the development process. Its original content was premised on a particular generally accepted understanding of development. Under the pressure of the problems of development that arose during the 1970s and 1980s, this general agreement on the key issues in development disintegrated. As a consequence, the consensus on the content of international development law also began to break down. Today, there are competing idealized views of development that shape the current debate about both development, and the content of international development law. The first view, which can be termed the traditional view, maintains that development is about economic growth. It argues that the challenges of economic development can be distinguished from other social, cultural, environmental and political issues in society, including human rights. The second view, which can be termed the modern view has a holistic understanding of development. It argues that development should be viewed as an integrated process of change that involves economic, social, cultural, political and environmental dimensions. Each of these views leads to a different understanding of the contents of international development law. The traditional and modern views of international development law differ in their understanding of the substantive content of development law, the importance they attach to the principle of sovereignty and in their view of the relationship between national and international law in the law applicable to the development process

The G20 and Sustainable IMF Reform

This article explores the problems with the current arrangements for international financial governance and the prospects for the IMF being sufficiently reformed to play an effective role in future arrangements for international financial governance. It proposes that the G20 initiate a multi-step process of reform