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A state may at any time lodge a declaration to the effect that it recognises as compulsory, in relation to any other state accepting the same obligation, the jurisdiction of the Court in certain specific instances. These are listed in article 36(2) of the Statute (the co-called 'Optional Clause'), namely:
The declaration may be made unconditionally; on condition of reciprocity on the part of several or certain states; or for a certain time. In practice the forty-seven states that have lodged declarations in terms of article 36 have tended to add other provisos.
The official languages of the Court are English and French, but the Court is bound to allow a party to use whatever language it chooses. The procedure consists of two parts: written and oral, and the hearings in Court are public unless the Court decides otherwise or the parties concerned so desire. All questions are decided by a majority vote of the judges present, and in the event of an equality of votes the President or the judge who acts in his place has a casting (i.e. deciding) vote. A judgement is final and without appeal, though the court may subsequently recognise the discovery of fresh evidence of a decisive nature, and permit an application for a revision of judgement to proceed. Since its inception, the Court has delivered sixty judgements on subjects such as land frontiers, marine boundaries, nationality, diplomatic relations and hostage-taking; and twenty-three Advisory Opinions. A further nine contentious cases are awaiting judgement.
The ICJ should not be confused with the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague which was established by the Security Council in 1993 primarily as an element of leverage in the Bosnian peace process which led up to the Dayton Accord, but which has not yet achieved its full legal potential.
In terms of the United Nations Charter the Secretary-General is the chief administrative officer of the Organisation. He acts as such at all meetings of the General Assembly, the Security Council and the Trusteeship Council, and carries out whatever functions these bodies assign to him. He submits an annual report to the General Assembly on the work of the Organisation, and may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security. He is appointed by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council for a period of five years, and he is responsible for the appointment of the staff of the Organisation in accordance with the regulations drawn up by the General Assembly. Selection of staff is primarily on the basis of merit, but representation on a balanced geographical basis is also a relevant factor. The Secretary-General and his staff are bound to act as international civil servants and may not seek or receive instructions from any government, or from any authority outside the Organisation; and member states similarly undertake not to try to influence them in any way.
UN PEACE-KEEPING OPERATIONS
The UN Charter is based on the principle of the sovereignty of the state, and makes provision for the maintenance of peace and security between states: it does not, however, make specific provision for peacekeeping operations within states. Nevertheless such operations are to an increasing extent authorised by the Secretary-General and the Security Council with a specific mandate. The state concerned must give its consent, and provisions relating especially to impartiality and the use of force on the part of the peace-keeping forces are specified. The basic conditions are that peace-keeping forces will in no way seek to influence the outcome of a dispute or be perceived as doing so; and that they will use force only if directly attacked or, to a lesser extent, if their property is under direct threat. The UN Secretary-General defines peacekeeping in 'An Agenda for Peace' as 'a technique that expands the possibilities for both the prevention of conflict and the making of peace'. He then defines four additional forms of related activities:
2. Peace-making is action to bring hostile parties to agreement by peaceful means. Means for peace-making would be negotiation, inquiries, methods of reconciliation, arbitrations or methods of judgement, and the help of the territorial organisations and agreements. Parties concerned normally involve the United National military and/or police personnel and frequently civilians as well.
4. Peace enforcement is action to enable the United Nations to deploy troops quickly to enforce a cease-fire by taking coercive action against either party or both, if they violate it. This kind of operation would be authorised by the Security Council.
Since 1948 the UN has authorised 31 military observer or peacekeeping operations, including - as examples of their diversity - the UN Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara, the UN Mission of Observers in Tajikistan (UNMOT), UN Assistance Mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR) and the UN Peace-keeping force in Cyprus.
The Department of Peace-keeping operations come under the direction of the Secretary-General.
INTERGOVERNMENTAL AGENCIES RELATED
TO THE UNITED NATIONS (INCLUDING
SPECIALISED AGENCIES)
The intergovernmental agencies related to the United Nations by special agreements are separate, autonomous organisations which work with the United Nations and each other through the coordinating machinery of the Economic and Social Council. Sixteen of the agencies are known as specialised agencies, a term used in the United Nations Charter. They report annually to the Economic and Social Council. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), established in 1957 under the aegis of the United Nations, reports annually to the General Assembly and, as appropriate, to the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council.
The FAO has extensive functions covering all aspects of food production and related activities. It collects, reviews, and makes available information and statistics on world agriculture, forestry and fisheries; it includes within its scope production, trade, consumption, nutrition, marketing, land tenure, and the protection of natural resources. It arranges for the provision of technical experts, assists in the negotiation of commodity and other related agreements, and encourages sustainable agriculture and rural development. The primary aim is to meet the needs of both present and future generations by promoting development that does not degrade the environment, is technically appropriate, economically viable and socially acceptable. Policy is determined by a Conference of representatives of all member countries which meets every two years and on which each member state is represented; responsibility in the period between its sessions rests with a Council of forty-nine elected by the Conference.
The Director-General and Secretariat are in Rome, and there are regional offices in Accra, Bangkok, Santiago and Cairo, and liaison offices in Washington and New York.
The IAEA encourages and coordinates research into the peaceful uses of atomic energy. It advises members on such subjects as the development of nuclear power, the uses of radioactive material in the fields of medicine, agriculture, etc., the disposal of radioactive waste, and water desalination; it provides experts where necessary, and offers research fellowships and training facilities.
In addition to its purely technical role the IAEA has increased responsibility under the 1968 Treaty of the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons for ensuring adequate safeguards and preventing the diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons in those non-nuclear states which are signatories of the treaty.
It is also responsible for implementing the International Nuclear Information System (INIS) which collects and disseminates information relating to nuclear matters. There are 115 members. The headquarters of the Agency is at the UN City in Vienna, and it is controlled by an annual Conference of member states and a Board of Governors of thirty-four.
Established in 1944 in Chicago, ICAO was formed to assure the safe, orderly and economic development of world civil air transportation. ICAO has developed a worldwide system of standards, practices and rules common to all nations. The Organisation serves the world today as a medium through which over 180 nations cooperate to ensure safety for the air-travelling public and for agreement in the technical, economic and legal fields of civil aviation.
The legislative body of ICAO is the Assembly which is composed of representatives of all member states and meets at least once in three years to review in detail the work of the Organisation performed during the last triennium and to decide on future policies.
The Council, which is the executive body of ICAO, comprises thirty-three members elected by the Assembly; they must be representative of the major civil aviation interests and facilities, as well as providing representation on a worldwide basis. The Council is responsible to the Assembly and meets in virtually continuous session. One of the major duties of the Council is to adopt international standards and recommended practices and to incorporate these as Annexes to the Convention on International Civil Aviation. It directs the work of the Organisation, establishes and supervises subsidiary technical committees, can act as arbiter between member states on matters concerning the interpretation and application of the Chicago Convention, provides technical assistance to developing nations, elects the President, appoints the Secretary-General, administers the finances of the Organisation and considers any matter relating to the Convention which any contracting state refers to it.
The Council is assisted by the Air Navigation Commission (in technical matters), the Air Transport Committee (in economic matters), the Committee on Joint Support of Air Navigation Services, the Finance Committee and the Legal Committee.
The headquarters of ICAO are in Montreal and there are regional offices in Bangkok, Cairo, Dakar, Lima, Mexico City, Nairobi and Paris.
The agreement establishing the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) was adopted on 13 June 1976 at a United Nations conference. It was opened for signature on 20 December 1976, following the attainment of initial pledges of US$ l billion, and entered into force on 30 November 1977. The main purpose of IFAD is to mobilise additional resources to help developing countries improve their food production and nutrition, fisheries, processing and storage - and concentrates on rural areas. Its primary goal is to help efforts to end chronic hunger and malnutrition. It lends money for projects which will have a significant impact on improving food production in developing countries, particularly for the benefit of the poorest sections of the rural populations. It seeks to bring small farmers and the landless into the development process: thus, the fund is concerned not only with production objectives but with the impact each project may have on employment, nutrition and income distribution. Loan operations of IFAD fall into two groups: projects initiated by the Fund and projects 'co-financed' with other financial and development institutions, such as the World Bank and IDA and the various development banks (African, Asian, Inter- American, Islamic). IFAD loans represent only a part of total project costs; the governments concerned contribute a share.
The Fund’s operations are directed by the Governing Council, on which all member states are represented, each of the three categories of members (developed countries, oil-exporting developing countries and other developing countries) having the same number of votes. Thus, the donor countries hold two-thirds of the total number of votes and the developing countries, at the same time, hold two-thirds of the votes. Current operations are overseen by the Executive Board, composed of eighteen Executive Directors, six from each of the three constituent categories, and eighteen alternates, and chaired by the President of the Fund. The headquarters of the fund are in Rome.
The ILO was founded in 1920 and seeks to raise the standards and dignity of human labour throughout the world. In particular it encourages freedom of association and the rights of workers’ organisations. It formulates conventions, makes recommendations, receives reports on labour conditions and related matters, and undertakes research and enquiries. Policy is determined by a Conference of all members which meets annually, member states being represented by two government delegates, one employers’ delegate and one employees’ delegate, and decisions being on the basis of a two-thirds majority. The executive of the organisation is the fifty-six-member Governing Body which meets quarterly and is responsible for determining programmes, convening conferences, preparing the budget and appointing the Director-General. It is part- nominated and part-elected by the Conference, and consists of twenty-eight government members, fourteen employers’ members and fourteen employees’ members. In order to play a more positive role in major international councils on social and economic development a policy of decentralisation of activities and resources was introduced under the ILO’s Active Partnership Policy.
The ILO has its headquarters and secretariat (the International Labour Office) in Geneva, regional offices in Addis Ababa, Bangkok, Istanbul and Lima, and an International Centre for Advanced Technical and Vocational Training in Turin.
The organisation changed its name from Inter-governmental Maritime Consultative Organisation (IMCO) to International Maritime Organisation (IMO) in May 1982. It is responsible for international cooperation in all technical matters relating to shipping. It was established on the basis of the Maritime Convention which resulted from the United Nations Maritime Conference held in Geneva 1948, and seeks to improve maritime safety and prevent maritime pollution from ships, disseminates information, convenes conferences, and promotes and administers international maritime conventions. It has an Assembly of all member states meeting every second year and a Council of twenty-four. There are five main Committees: on maritime safety, legal matters, marine environment protection, the facilitation of maritime trade and technical cooperation. The headquarters and Secretariat are in London.
The ITU is the body responsible for international cooperation, research and the dissemination of knowledge in all branches of telecommunications, and for the administration of its Convention. Policy decisions are made by a Plenipotentiary Conference of all member states meeting every five years; executive control lies with the Administrative Council elected by the Assembly and meeting annually, and their three permanent organs: the International Frequency Registration Board, the International Radio Consultative Committee and the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee. The General Secretariat is in Geneva.
The International Monetary Fund is an intergovernmental organisation based on a treaty drafted at Bretton-Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944 (amended in 1969 and in 1978), and membership of the Fund is a prerequisite of membership of the World Bank. Current membership is 181 countries.
The essential purpose of the Fund is to promote international monetary cooperation and thereby foster expanded international trade. It is a permanent forum where countries can work to coordinate their economic and financial policies, and is concerned not only with the problems of individual countries but also with the working of the international monetary system. As the world monetary system has changed, so too has the Fund, but the underlying purposes of the organisation and of membership in it remain the same. It has both regulatory and financing functions.
Members agree to abide by a code of economic behaviour and to cooperate with the Fund and with each other in order to ensure orderly exchange arrangements, to promote exchange stability and to avoid restrictions that would harm national and international prosperity. The Fund is required to exercise surveillance over their exchange rate policies and it maintains a large pool of currencies from which to help finance the temporary imbalances of its members, and this financial assistance - provided for short-term to medium-term periods and usually subject to conditions - allows member countries to correct their payment imbalances without having to resort to the trade and payment restrictions that they have pledged themselves to avoid. The policy adjustments that countries make in connection with the use of Fund resources support their creditworthiness and thereby facilitate their access to financial markets. In 1969, the Fund created SDRs (special drawing rights) as a reserve asset. One SDR equals approximately US$0.70.
The work of the Fund is carried out by a Board of Governors, an Executive Board, a Managing Director, and staff. Each member country is represented by a Governor and an Alternate Governor on the Board of Governors, which is the Fund’s senior decision-making body. The Board of Governors meets annually, but may be asked by the Executive Board to vote on important matters by mail or cable between meetings. A member country’s voting power is related to its subscription to the Fund’s financial resources, and is broadly reflective of its relative size in the world economy (i.e. trade, gross national product and monetary reserves). The daily business of the Fund is conducted at its headquarters in Washington, DC, by an Executive Board consisting of twenty-four Executive Directors, chaired by the Managing Director. Each of the five members having the largest quotas, and thus the highest voting power - the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan - appoints an Executive Director. In addition, there are three Executive Directors representing single country constituencies: China, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Sixteen Executive Directors are elected by members or groups of member countries.
The Board of Governors is advised on policy issues by two ministerial-level committees whose membership reflects that of the Executive Board: the Interim Committee of the Board of Governors on the International Monetary System and the Joint Ministerial Committee of the World Bank and the Fund on the Transfer of Real Resources to Developing Countries (the Development Committee). The Interim and Developing Committees normally meet twice a year - in the spring at Fund headquarters in Washington, and in the autumn at the site of the Annual Meetings of the Fund and Bank.
The Fund also maintains small permanent offices in Paris, in Geneva, and at the United Nations in New York.
Exchange-rate policies
Since the early 1970s, the international monetary system has undergone major changes. The Bretton Woods agreement, founded on a system of par values fixed in terms of gold, came to an end in practice after the decision by the United States in 1971 no longer to convert dollars into gold or other reserve assets. As a consequence, countries were obliged to choose new exchange arrangements, a situation recognised in the Second Amendment (1978) to the Fund’s Articles of Agreement. The major economic countries opted for a freely floating exchange rate, but the majority of individual countries maintain a fixed exchange rate pegged either to another currency, to the SDR or to some other basket of major currencies. The members of the European Monetary System (EMS) undertake to maintain fixed margins for the exchange rates of their currencies vis-à-vis other currencies within the group, but the rates for these currencies are allowed to fluctuate with respect to currencies outside the group.
Consultations
The Fund conducts consultations with each member country - in principle, annually - to appraise the member’s economic and financial situation and policies. The consultation procedure begins with meetings in the member country between Fund staff and representatives of the member government. On the basis of these discussions, the staff prepares a report on economic conditions and policies for the Executive Board. The Board then discusses and comments on the report. The Board’s views, as summarised by the Managing Director, are then transmitted to the member government by the Fund.
Quotas and resources
The Fund’s resources stem largely from its members’ subscriptions, and these are based on a quota system which broadly reflects a member’s weight in the world economy. Quotas also determine the voting power of members, their contributions to the Fund’s resources, their access to these resources, and their share in allocations of SDRs.
While subscriptions constitute its basic resources, the Fund supplements them by borrowing. Under the General Arrangements to Borrow (GAB), which became effective in October 1962, ten industrial member countries together with non-member Switzerland (constituting the eleven-nation 'Group of Ten') extended credit lines to the Fund. The GAB has been renewed periodically, and in 1984 Saudi Arabia associated itself with the other eleven participants.
Additionally, the IMF agreed in 1997 to establish (subject to confirmation) a scheme entitled New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB) as a facility of first recourse whereby twenty-four countries agree to make loans to the Fund totalling SDR34 billion (approximately US$48 billion) wherever additional resources are needed to forestall or cope with an impairment of the international monetary system, or to deal with an exceptional situation that poses a threat to the stability of the system. Participants in the NAB are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, the Deutsche Bundesbank, Finland, France, Italy, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Luxembourg, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, the Sveriges Riksbank, the Swiss National Bank, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
Financial facilities
Members have access to the financial resources of the Fund under a variety of permanent and temporary facilities to help meet balance of payments needs. The mechanics of the transaction are as follows. The member uses its own currency to 'purchase' from the Fund an equivalent amount of the currencies of other members (or SDRs), and these in turn can be used to finance the member’s balance of payments deficit or to supply its need for reserves. Within a specific period - or earlier if the member’s balance of payments and reserve position improves - the member must repay the Fund by repurchasing with SDRs or the currencies of other members specified by the Fund the amount of its own currency that it used in order to make the drawing, except to the extent that the Fund sells the member’s currency. Credit from the Fund is available in four tranches, each tranche being the equivalent of 25 per cent of the quota.