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ARE INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS BOUND BY INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS…
in its general external competence to conclude treaties, but it may limit its specific
capacity to enter into human rights contractual obligations.
The problem of legal personality and inherent capacities does not necessarily need
to be solved also when addressing another issue important in the human rights context,
namely that of capacity of international organisations to have their international
responsibility engaged. It seems to be generally accepted that the ability to bear rights
and duties and the ability to breach them are two sides of the same coin, i.e. that
engaging international responsibility is inherent to the separate legal personality of
international organisations. This view is prevailing not only in the literature53, but
it is also reflected in the ILC work on this topic. In the Commentary on Article 354
of the Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations, the ILC
assumed that the general principle, as stated in Articles 3 and 4, applies to „whichever
entity commits an internationally wrongful act“.55
3. Human rights obligations of international organisations:
basis and sources
The previous explanations shed light on the developments justifying an analysis
of the key question of this article and suggest answering it in the affirmative. They
also provided the answer to the basic question of whether it is generally possible
under international law to think of international organisations as entities bound by
human rights law. However, the crucial question when looking at the issue from
a normative perspective has not been answered yet: whether there exist international
human rights obligations that can be applied to an international organisation and, if
yes, what their sources are.56
I will first look at international treaties as the most obvious source of human rights
obligations. However, currently no international organisation, with one exception being
53 Cf. NAERT, Frederik. International Law Aspects of EU’s Security and Defence Policy. Supra note 37,
p. 296 (with further references, esp. note 1363).
54 Article 3 of the Draft Articles stipulates: “Every internationally wrongful act of an international organization
entails the international responsibility of that organization.” (ILC, Responsibility of International
Organizations. Text and titles of draft articles 1 to 67 adopted by the Drafting Committee on second
reading in 2011, 30 May 2011, UN General Assembly Doc. A/CN.4/L.778).
55 Draft articles on the responsibility of international organizations, with commentaries, adopted by the
International Law Commission at its sixty-third session, in 2011, and submitted to the General Assembly
as a part of the Commission’s report covering the work of that session (A/66/10), p. 13, para. 1.
56 At this stage I want to briefly mention one more interesting point, of which a more detailed exploration
goes beyond the scope of this contribution, namely to address how international can be (or are) bound
by human rights obligations. For example, Uerpmann specifies the following options: accession,
succession, incorporation by means of express reference and by general principles of law (UERPMANN,
Robert. International Law as an Element of European Constitutional Law: International Supplem entary
Constitutions . Heidelberg: Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law,
2003. Jean Monnet Working Paper 9/03. available at:
papers/03/030901-02.pdf ).