In seeking to establish and uphold the rule of law within the United Nations and international organisations, IO Watch is committed to researching legal issues. This section includes the following features.

      A very useful overview article is “Rule without law: Injustice at the United Nations?", by Edward Patrick Flaherty and Sarah Hunt, originally published in the April 2006 edition of The Geneva Post Quarterly.

The Centre for Accountability of International Organisations (CAIO) focuses on the legal issues surrounding international immunity and accountability (see www.caio-ch.org).  It has produced, inter alia, a legal overview prepared by IO Watch, CAIO’s opening speech by leading Justice Geoffrey Robertson Q.C., Justice of the UN Sierra Leone War Crimes Tribunal, and a research paper prepared by the Amsterdam International Law Clinic for CAIO.

     --  Legal Overview

     --  CAIO speech

     --  Amsterdam Clinic research  paper

A link which provides the legal opinions of three international jurists who have examined the UN’s internal legal system is found at www.ilo.org/public/english/staffun/info/iloat.

An excellent, critical expert report on reforming the UN’s “homemade} internal justice system is Report of the Commission of Experts on Reforming Internal Justice at the United Nations, prepared in 2006 (and of great interest as the UN unveils a purportedly “new and much improved” internal justice system in 2009. 

     Two extremely detailed reports on recent lawsuits by UN staff against UN abuses are presented under the IO Watch “UN Lives on the Dark Side” feature: UNHCR, harassment, Geneva, 2003-2007, and WMO, racketeering, Geneva, 2003-2007.      

     The IO Watch Archives give much attention to the question of the rule of law in the UN, which enjoys legal immunity from suit, a major factor in the difficulty of establishing strong accountability processes within the UN Secretariat and other international organizations.  The following subsections in the “Where is the rule of Law?” section are of particular interest: 

      Staff Rights?

Inept "Administration of Justice" System

Behind the Scenes

Major Ongoing Flaws

       UN Code of Conduct

       Outmoded internal justice processes

       The most serious loopholes

 Related UN External Initiatives

 Piercing the Cloak of UN Impunity

Hope for the Future?

       Revision of the Code of Conduct

       External experts justice reform review

       Human rights ombudsman

Elsewhere in this website, see:

     Under “The six "black holes" of UN non-accountability”, see UN senior officials remain comfortably outside the law, and especially the “Interested in more details?” box at the end of its Part II.

     Under UN Management Accountability Struggles”, see The Winner: "Free the Managers", and Unleashed  Managers, as well as Manager/investigators?.     

     Under “Recent Developments”, see Management culture deterioration, Corruption characteristics, and Global Compact hypocrisy.

         
    In the IO Watch “UN Lives on the Dark Side” feature see UN, impunity, 2007,  UN, hypocrisy, 2007, and  UN, hindrances, 2004.

     A very incisive 2001 report from an independent law firm, describing the serious problems with the UN’s sexual harassment grievance procedures, is found at the UN Panel of Counsel website, www.un.org/staff/panelofcounsel/shrep.htm.

IO Watch will add more items of interest in the future.