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The Competence of International Organizations and the Advisory Jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice
Dapo Akande1
Full text available: PDF format *
Abstract
The International Court of Justice's recent decision to refuse to render an opinion requested by the World Health Organization on the legality of nuclear weapons and its opinion delivered in response to a similar request from the United Nations General Assembly have raised a number of issues relating to the competence of international organizations and its own advisory jurisdiction. The author examines the issue of implied powers of international organizations and argues that the decision that the WHO had no competence to deal with the legality of nuclear weapons (or other hazardous substances) departs from the Court's previous jurisprudence. It is argued that a broad, rather than narrow, competence for international organizations is more consistent with principle and practice as well as with the Court's jurisprudence. In relation to the Court's advisory jurisdiction, the author asks whether it is always within the competence of UN specialized agencies to seek opinions on the interpretation of their constituent instruments. The author also examines whether requests from the General Assembly have to relate to the work of that organ. The concluding section examines the circumstances in which the Court ought to exercise its discretion to refuse to render an opinion requested of it. It is argued that the fact that a request relates to an abstract question, unrelated to any particular factual situation, ought not to debar the Court from exercising its jurisdiction.
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1 * Lecturer in Law, University of Nottingham; LLB Hons.
(Ife); LLM, (Lond.); PhD Candidate, Magdalene College Cambridge. Many thanks to
Professor James Crawford, University of Cambridge, for his helpful comments on
earlier drafts.
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This file was last modified:
Tuesday, October 14, 2003 12:54PM