7 Immunity, 7.3 Difference relating to Immunity from Legal Process of a Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, Advisory Opinion, [1999] ICJ Rep 62

Subject(s):

Human rights remedies — Immunity from jurisdiction — Membership of international organizations — International organizations, practice and procedure — Responsibility of international organizations — Judgments

The advisory opinion is one of the relatively few cases that have required the International Court of Justice to consider directly issues related to the immunity of an international organization (in this case the UN). It provides important guidance on how to delineate between activities that are pursued by the UN and its officials in an official capacity, which are therefore entitled to immunity, and activities which are pursued in some other capacity and therefore are subject to national jurisdiction. At a procedural level the case is significant as the first occasion on which the process of so-called ‘binding advisory opinions’ under art. VIII, Section 30 of the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations has been invoked, leading in itself to some interesting questions about the adaptation of the Court’s advisory jurisdiction to a more formal mode of dispute settlement.