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Some Problems Connected with the Organs of International Organizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Wojciech Morawiecki
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Extract

The attempts which have been undertaken, primarily by specialists in international law, to define an international organization emphasize a variety of features which distinguish that social phenomenon. Some of the characteristics that have been mentioned include creation on the basis of an international agreement, the existence of a distinct personality of the organization separate from its individual members, the exhibition of a relative autonomy of will by the organs of the agency as compared with the will of the total of its members, etc. There is general agreement that an essential feature of an international organization is the possession of permanent organs; otherwise, there has so far been no consensus on the necessity for an international organization to possess any specific feature. For example, it can be demonstrated that there are no bases for particularly stressing, as a supposedly indispensable feature of such an organization, its possessing a separate personality and an autonomy of will, as is done by certain French authors.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , Fall 1965 , pp. 913 - 928
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1965

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References

1 In accordance with the classification accepted in the United Nations, two fundamental categories of international organizations are distinguished: intergovernmental organizations and nongovernmental organizations (Article 71 of the UN Charter). In the current sense of the term, it is the former, i.e., the intergovernmental organizations, that are identified with international organizations. For, indeed, it is they that play a considerable role in international relations, and it is principally on them that the attention and interests of public opinion at large are concentrated. The criterion of the division is, of course, the character of the members of the organization. When the members are states, we are dealing with intergovernmental organizations. Thus, the term most appropriate for such organizations is that of interstate organizations.

2 Compare, e.g., the definitions suggested within the framework of the United Nations International Law Commission by Brierly, J. L., Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 1950 (UN Document A/CN.4/SER.A/1950/Add.1), Vol. II, p. 223Google Scholar; by Hudson, M. O., Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 1950 (UN Document A/CN.4/SER.A/1950), Vol. I, p. 84Google Scholar; and by Fitzmaurice, G. G., Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 1956 (UN Document A/CN.4/SER.A/1056/Add.1), Vol. II, p. 108Google Scholar.

3 E.g., Reuter, Paul, Institutions internationales (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955), p. 292Google Scholar; andBastid, Susanne, Cours d'institutions internationales (Paris: Les Cours de Droit, 1955–1956), p. 401Google Scholar.

4 Morawiecki, W., Organizacje miedzynarodowe [International Organizations] (2nd ed.; Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1965), p. 31Google Scholar.

5 A third category of organs, within the framework of this classification, consists of interparliamentary organs. They make their appearance, as a relatively new phenomenon, within some of the Western European organizations: in the Council of Europe, 1949; in the European Communities (the European Coal and Steel Community [ECSC], 1952; the European Economic Community [EEC], 1958; and the European Atomic Energy Community [Euratom], 1958); in the Nordic Council, 1953; as well as in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in the form of the extraconstitutional Conference of NATO Parliamentarians. Such parliamentarian assemblies are composed of delegates of the parliaments of the member states, in numbers proportionate as a rule to the number of the population of the respective states. Their purpose, in principle, is to exercise certain control functions over the activities of the intergovernmental and administrative organs. The powers enjoyed by them, however, are very modest in scope. Moreover, their character is rather unrepresentative because of the reactionary criteria applied in the selection of the delegates (the Nordic Council constitutes an exception in this respect). In connection with this, the role played by such organs is, in the large majority of cases, illusory.

8 According to the criterion of the character of the members, the category of administrative organs should also include the organs of international justice and the executive organs of the European Communities. The principal functions of such organs, however, differ fundamentally from those of secretariats (and, indeed, they themselves have secretariats of their own). Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the executive organs of the European Communities do carry out functions which are, to some extent, similar to the new executive functions of the secretariats of other international organizations. The peculiar structure and rules of the Communities' executives, however, are designed to ensure that they carry out their functions correctly; the executives differ fundamentally in structure and governing principles from the international secretariats, first, because they are collective organs whose members are elected by member governments, and secondly, because they adopt decisions by voting.

7 Dag Hammarskjöld made a distinction in his last Introduction to his annual report, submitted to the sixteenth session of the General Assembly, between two posssible conceptions of international organization and stressed the necessity of an active and political role of international administratio. While it seems that in principle such necessity may exist, his mistake consisted mainly in overlooking and even denying its logical and practical consequences—that an essential change in functions requires equally serious modifications in structures and procedures. (For the Introduction to the Annual Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, 16 June 1960–15 June 1961, see General Assembly Official Records [16th session], Supplement No. lA.)

8 It would be most correct to describe them as interstate organs.

9 They are not organs which carry out executive functions. The implementation of both the tasks of an international organization and of the resolutions of its belongs, under contemporary conditions, to the member states. It is only quite exceptionally that the organization itself carries out executive functions, and then only within a well-defined and narrow scope; even in such a case it does so through the intermediary of its administrative organs rather than through that of intergovernmental ones.

10 We may consider to be internal matters of an international organization such questions as: the establishment of the agenda of both the session and meetings; the election of the officers of the several organs; the election of the members of such organs; the creation of auxiliary organs; the adoption of the rules (procedure); the adoption of regulations concerning administrative personnel; the adoption of financial regulations, including the passage of the administrative budget and the fixing of the amounts of members' contributions to it; and the admission, suspension, and exclusion of members. In all the above questions the resolutions passed by international organizations have the character of binding decisions.

11 After the Second World War, the division of Europe into Western and Eastern Europe has been dictated not so much by geographical as precisely by political considerations. For, indeed, it was exclusively the Socialist states that have been included in Eastern Europe. If the criteria of such division had really been geographical, to include either Finland or Greece in Western Europe would have been unjustified.