Meeting The Challenges Of International Organizations' New Threat Environment

• Published date: 07 July 2022
• Subject Matter: Environment, Government, Public Sector, International Law, Environmental Law, Constitutional & Administrative Law, Terrorism, Homeland Security & Defence, Export Controls & Trade & Investment Sanctions, Human Rights, Climate Change
• Law Firm: Debevoise & Plimpton
• Author: Ms Natalie L. Reid and Duncan Pickard

International organizations play critical roles in upholding the rule of law in their areas of expertise-from managing global crises like climate change or the coronavirus pandemic, to more quotidian issues such as telecommunications and civil aviation. Their work evidently requires coordination and consultation among myriad international, regional, and national stakeholders. It also exposes them and their officials to uniquely global risks.

The principal legal mechanism to ensure that international organizations can pursue their objectives independently and efficiently is to accord them certain privileges and immunities in respect of their official functions. Many international organizations, in turn, establish internal accountability mechanisms to address complaints that otherwise may have gone to national courts.

The precise nature of international organizations' privileges and immunities varies by jurisdiction, function, and legal instrument. For example, the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations (known as the General Convention) grants the U.N. and its employees immunity from legal process; provides that its premises, property, and assets shall be immune from confiscation or any other form of interference; and permits the U.N. freely to hold, transfer, and convert its funds. A similar treaty exists for the U.N. specialized agencies. Founding treaties of many other international organizations also extend privileges and immunities in more general terms.

But although international organizations' privileges and immunities are important, the protection they offer is incomplete. Many countries have not incorporated the full range of international organizations' privileges and immunities into national law; others have deliberately violated them. Even in jurisdictions that afford international organizations their full measure of privileges and immunities as a matter of law, they may receive scrutiny from law enforcement officers unfamiliar with those protections. And, of course, international organizations also face operational threats that their privileges and immunities cannot prevent. Here we address (i) trends in international organizations' risk environment and (ii) what international organizations can do in response.

I. International Organizations' Changing Risk Environment

Although each organization's risk profile will depend on factors such as its area of expertise, the source of its privileges and immunities in a particular jurisdiction, and its legal personality under international or national law, recent years have seen five troubling trends.

Targeting of experts. Governments around the world have targeted, threatened to target, or failed to protect experts that international organizations have sent on mission to their territory. In 2019, the Saudi government monitored the phone of a member of the Human Rights...