Rights, Functions, and International Legal Personality of International Organizations

Abstract

This Article asserts that every international organization carries some irreducible minimum attributes by virtue of them having rights (not just functions) vis-à-vis their member states, which give them their status as international organizations. The rise of such entities as the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission has helped these issues relating to international legal personality regain the focus they received in the United Nation's early days with the Reparation advisory opinion. As new ife is breathed into dormant international organizations and as emerging international organizations continue to expand their operations in the next few years, the importance of international legal personality will continue to grow. This Article's emphasis on rights over functions in determining international legal personality sets the framework within which this crucial debate will unfold.