Second Report on the t relations between States and international organizations – ILC Special Rapporteur El-Erian
Reference Number: A/CN.4/311 and Add.1
Type of Document: Soft law
International Organization: United Nations
Year: 1978
Issuing Body: International bodies and institutions
By resolution 1289(XIII) of 5 December 1958, the General Assembly invited the International Law Commission to consider the question of relations between States and international organizations. The second part of the topic focused on the status and immunities of international organizations and their functionaries. At its twenty-eighth session in 1976, the Commission requested the Special Rapporteur El- Erian to prepare a preliminary report on the second part of the topic of relations between States and international organizations, namely, “the status, privileges and immunities of international organizations, their officials, experts and other persons engaged in their activities who are not representatives of States”.
The Second Report, prepared by the Special Rapporteur, summarizes the considerations expressed by the Commission and the Sixth Committee on the preliminary report and addresses the legal questions concerning the status, privileges and immunities of international organizations in light of the discussions of the Commission and the Sixth Committee.
The Commission and the Sixth Committee debated the advisability of initiating the codification of the legal regime on the privileges and immunities of international organizations and their agents. The codification project rested on the assumption that customary rules on the immunity of international organizations and their officials existed.
Two opposite views emerged. Several members of the Commission and some delegations in the Sixth Committee welcomed the Special Rapporteur’s proposals. In particular, Ushakov pointed out that “the existing diplomatic law of international organizations were based on the common principle that an international organization, in order to exist, must enjoy a special status in the State, whether a member or a non-member, in whose territory it had headquarters. That was a general rule on which all relations between States and international organizations were based.” Reuter affirmed that “a customary rule could be considered to exist according to which the privileges and immunities of an international official were based on, and limited by, the requirements of his functions”. By contrast, according to the opposite view, it was premature to undertake the codification of general rules on the status and immunities of international organizations and their officials, since the existence of specific treaty regimes.
The Special Rapporteur’s analysis of the legal questions concerning the status and the privileges and immunities of international organizations consists of four sections: a) the impact of institutional evolution and functional expansion in the field of international organizations; b) the contribution of national law to the legislative sources of international immunities; c) the case for codification of the law of international immunities; d) the place of regional organizations in the regime of international immunities