At the end of February, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a landmark judgment on the immunity of international organizations in Jam v. International Finance Corporation, 58 U.S. (2019). The case concerned the meaning of the 1945 International Organizations Immunities Act (IOIA), which affords international organizations “the same immunity from suit … as is enjoyed by foreign governments.” 22 U.S.C. § 288a(b). Writing for a 7-1 majority, Chief Justice Roberts found that the IOIA incorporates a dynamic immunities regime, equivalent to whatever immunities US law affords to foreign states. The immunities of international organizations are keyed to sovereign immunity. The former evolve to meet the latter. Thus, as the US law of sovereign immunity has shifted from an absolute to a restrictive paradigm with the enactment of the 1952 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), so too does the IOIA today incorporate merely restrictive immunity for international organizations. Writing in dissent, Breyer laments the majority’s approach, arguing for a static interpretation of the IOIA on purposive grounds. Given his druthers, Breyer…
Responsibility of International Organizations
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SCOTUS Decision in Jam et al v. International Finance Corporation (IFC) Denies Absolute Immunity to IFC…With Caveats
Editor's Note: In view of this landmark SCOTUS decision yesterday, this post is a brief deviation from our ongoing Symposium for the ESIL Interest Group on Migration and Refugee Law on the UN Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees: The Twin Peaks?. We immediately continue with the Symposium after this post. When it rains, it…
The United Nations’ Efforts to Restore a Reputation Tarnished by Cholera
Overwhelming evidence demonstrates that UN peacekeepers are the source of a 2010 cholera outbreak that has infected nearly 800,000 people and killed more than 9,000 people. After refusing to apologize or provide redress to the individual victims for six years, the United Nations appears to be changing course. On December 1, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke…
Launch of Oxford Guidance on the Law Relating to Humanitarian Relief Operations in Situations of Armed Conflict
In many, if not most, armed conflicts, far more deaths occur as a result of the humanitarian crisis created by the conflict rather than from hostilities or the use of force (see this useful study, at p. 842). In addition to those who die as a result of a lack of food, water, access to medical care…
Dutch Supreme Court Affirms that Dutchbat Acted Unlawfully in Srebrenica
Tom Dannenbaum is a Visiting Lecturer in Law and Robina Foundation Human Rights Fellow at Yale Law School and a PhD candidate at Princeton University. In a couple of posts in 2011, I discussed two nearly identical Hague Court of Appeal judgments on the liability of the Netherlands for the actions of Dutchbat…