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ARE INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS BOUND BY INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS…
To sum up, inasmuch as (certain) human rights can be considered to form
general principles of international law, they will bind international organisations and
apply to their activities. Despite the fact that this is a somewhat imprecise answer to
the questions of whether human rights constitute general principles of international
law
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and of which of them, if yes, in practice the general nature of general principles
makes them less likely to be a subject of derogation than is, for example, the case with
customary obligations.
3.4 Unilateral acts as another source of human rights obligations
International organisations may possess the competence to adopt decisions binding
themselves; thus it appears logical to discuss unilateral acts as a possible source of
human rights obligations. Nevertheless, such obligations may have different addressees.
International organisations may adopt decisions binding themselves internally (internal
instructions binding its organs
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), but they may produce unilateral commitments
in their external relations, for example by promising to provide humanitarian aid
or money to a third State. Things get even more complicated with the internal–
external conception if the organisation is empowered to adopt decisions binding to
its Member States (e.g. the European Union). I will not explore this at this stage, as
it does not appear necessary for answering the question whether such unilateral acts
can be a source of human rights obligations. As much as international organisations
possess the capacity to issue such acts, be it with purely internal effect or also external
effect, whether the addressees are the Member States or third States, unilateral acts
can be considered as a source of their human rights obligations.
4. Conclusions
The present study has certainly its weak but also strong points. Among the weak
ones which I am aware of, is that it appears difficult to address questions of a general
character such as is the case in this contribution. Such considerations are likely to
leave questions unanswered or often stop at a point when it starts to get interesting.
However, I consider the article to have provided strong evidence for the necessity to
go back to the roots of all the interesting niches of the two dominant trends in the
post-war development of international law, its humanisation and institutionalisation,
and to explore one of the fundamental questions arising from the intertwinement of
these developments, namely whether international organisations have human rights
obligations under international law.
I have shown that currently international organisations must be regarded as separate
legal entities under international law, and thus they are also generally able to bear
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An interesting approach was taken by
Clapham
, who does not mention general principles of law but
adds another „category“ of human rights law by speaking about „universal standards, which may not
necessarily by legally binding as such“. CLAPHAM, Andrew.
Human rights obligations of non-state
actors
.
Supra
note 22, p. 99-100.
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For example, the UN-Secretary General’s Bulletin on Observance by United Nations forces of
international humanitarian law (UN Doc. ST/SGB/1999/13 of 6 August 1999).