Occupying territory, temporarily or permanently, is not a recent phenomenon. International organizations engaging in such occupation, however, is. The first instance of temporary territorial administration by a proto-international organization occurred more than 150 years ago with the case of Cape Spartel, while the League of Nations also performed governance of several internationalized territories. Following the abortive attempts to assume similar missions in Trieste and Jerusalem in the late 1940s, the United Nations did successfully govern West Irian in 1962-1963, Cambodia in 1992 1993, and parts of eastern Croatia from 1996 through 1998. However, it was only in 1999 that it embarked on two trailblazing comprehensive territorial administration projects, one in Timor-Leste and one in Kosovo. Those missions were the first time an international organizations assumed the entirety of the legislative, executive, and judicial functions of a territory. Those two missions have been the subject of a welter of scholastic analyses, including in terms of their treatment of the governed populationsâ human rights. One noticeable gap in the literature is the matter of economic, social, and cultural rights. In particular, there appears to have been no attempt to assess whether an international organization undertaking all encompassing territorial governance has a legal duty to secure those rights for the inhabitants it governs. Answering that question is a matter of direct practical import. Territorial governance projects are invariably undertaken in areas of recent conflict where the populationsâ food, housing, healthcare, education, and other basic needs are severely compromised. The entity administrating such a territory, particularly an international organization with an imprimatur of the international community of nations, would be certainly deemed to have a moral obligation to address those needs but, if it fails to do so, it is appropriate to inquire whether it could be forced to do so legally. In its quest to find the answer, this work turns to the direct sources of law first to evaluate whether an international organization is bound by treaty law, customary law, or the general principles of law as recognized by civilized nations. It also examines the possibility of an international organization committing itself to observance of economic, social, and cultural rights by way of a unilateral act. Next, more indirect routes of legal liability are considered, in particular whether the rules on state succession and the law of armed conflict might introduce obligations concerning economic, social, and cultural rights upon an international organization engaged in territorial governance. Lastly, the member states of an international organization are considered, namely, whether they have any economic, social, and cultural rights duties outside their own territories and, if so, how such duties interact with their obligation against circumvention of those duties by acting through an international organization. It is concluded that the traditional sources of law do not bind international organizations in the context of economic, social, and cultural rights. They are not bound by the relevant treaties and those rights are part of neither customary law nor the general principles of law. The law and customs of war are not sufficient either to give rise to economic, social, and cultural rights obligations while the rules on state succession may do so only in certain circumstances and under theoretical assumptions that are not universally shared. While international organizationsâ member states do have a measure of extraterritorial obligations in the context of these rights, the issue of circumvention as defined by the law on state responsibility is unlikely to arise. The most propitious avenue of establishing a legal duty would be for an international organization to voluntarily assume obligations for economic, social, and cultural rights, a
| Date of Award | 1 Aug 2019 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Awarding Institution | - The University of Manchester
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| Supervisor | Jean D'Aspremont (Supervisor) & Iain Scobbie (Supervisor) |
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