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Part 5 · Organs of the United Nations

One Charter, six organs, and a court that can hear a state only if that state has consented. This topic is examined as a hypothetical, and the hypothetical almost always opens the same way: can this dispute get before the International Court of Justice at all? Jurisdiction first, merits second, always.

Ideas and cases at a glance

Authority	In a line
UN Charter arts 1 and 2	Purposes: peace and security, friendly relations, co-operation, harmonising centre. Principles: sovereign equality, good faith, peaceful settlement, prohibition on aggression, collective action, non-intervention
UN Charter arts 9 to 18	The General Assembly: every member, one vote each, discussion and recommendation, budget, two-thirds majority for important questions
UN Charter arts 23 and 27	The Security Council: five permanent and ten rotating members; substantive decisions need nine affirmative votes including the concurring votes of the permanent members
UN Charter arts 39, 41 and 42	Chapter VII: determine the threat, then measures short of force, then military action
ICJ Statute art 36	Contentious jurisdiction rests on consent: referral by the parties, treaty clauses, or compulsory jurisdiction declarations
North Sea Continental Shelf; Bosnian Genocide Case; Whaling Case	One worked example of each jurisdictional basis, in that order
The Gambia v Myanmar (2022)	Any state party may invoke responsibility for breach of obligations erga omnes partes, no special interest required
Climate Change Advisory Opinion	Advisory opinions answer legal questions from UN organs; the discretion to refuse is exercised only for compelling reasons

The Charter's architecture

The UN Charter does for the international system something like what a constitution does for a state: it creates institutions, distributes power among them, and states the principles the power serves. Article 1 sets the purposes: to maintain international peace and security, to develop friendly relations among nations, to achieve international co-operation, and to be a centre for harmonising the actions of nations. Article 2 states the core principles that discipline the pursuit of those purposes: sovereign equality, good faith, peaceful settlement of disputes, the prohibition on aggression, collective action, and non-intervention. Article 7 then names the principal organs. Four matter for the exam: the General Assembly, the Security Council, the International Court of Justice, and the Secretariat, with ECOSOC completing the prescribed list.

RULE. checklistBefore analysing any organ, place it: purposes (art 1), principles (art 2), organs (art 7). An answer that quotes an organ's power without naming the purpose it serves is describing machinery, not applying the Charter.

The General Assembly

The General Assembly is the plenary organ: every member of the United Nations sits in it (art 9), and each state has one vote, with important questions requiring a two-thirds majority (art 18). One state, one vote is sovereign equality made visible. Its powers are deliberately soft. It may discuss and make recommendations on matters within the scope of the Charter (art 10), including recommendations concerning international peace and security (art 11) and recommendations to retain friendly relations between states (art 14). It approves the budget, apportioned between members (art 17), and admits new members on the recommendation of the Security Council (art 4(2)). One structural limit is a favourite exam detail: the Assembly cannot make recommendations on a dispute while the Security Council is exercising its functions in respect of it (art 12(1)).

RULE. arrowThe General Assembly discusses and recommends; it does not legislate and its resolutions do not bind. Their legal significance is indirect: a resolution can supply evidence of opinio juris for a customary rule, as the custom topic explains.

Trap. A resolution is not a statute. When a problem waves a General Assembly resolution at you, the question is never whether it binds directly. It never does. The question is what work it does as evidence, and whether it is precise enough to bear on the obligation alleged.

The Security Council

The Security Council is where the Charter concentrates hard power. Its composition is fifteen: five permanent members and ten rotating members chosen with regard to equitable geographical distribution (art 23). Voting is where the composition bites (art 27). Each member has one vote. Procedural votes need the support of nine of the fifteen. Substantive votes need nine affirmative votes including the concurring votes of the permanent members. That final clause is the veto, and it is the standing exam tension: the same Charter that proclaims sovereign equality in art 2 hands five states a power no one else has.

The Council's enforcement powers climb Chapter VII in three steps. Under art 39 it determines the existence of a threat to the peace and makes recommendations. Under art 41 it may employ measures short of force, such as sanctions, to compel compliance with its decisions. Under art 42 it may take military action to maintain or restore international peace and security. Unlike the Assembly, the Council's decisions bind: members agree to accept and carry them out (art 25), and obligations under the Charter prevail over obligations under any other agreement (art 103).

RULE. staircaseChapter VII climbs in order: an art 39 determination that a threat exists, then art 41 measures short of force, then art 42 military action. Locate any Council act on the correct step before evaluating it.

RULE. twistSecurity Council decisions bind all members (art 25), unless the measure never clears the voting rule: a substantive decision needs nine affirmative votes including the concurring votes of the permanent members (art 27). The veto is the twist that explains most of the Council's failures.

Trap. Bindingness runs opposite to size. The plenary Assembly of all members can only recommend; the fifteen-member Council can bind everyone. Students reverse this under pressure. Fix the pairing now: Assembly recommends, Council decides.

The International Court of Justice

Chapter XIV of the Charter establishes the ICJ as the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (art 92). All members of the UN are automatically parties to the ICJ Statute (art 93), each state undertakes to comply with the Court's decision in any case to which it is a party (art 94(1)), and a party faced with non-compliance may have recourse to the Security Council to give effect to the judgment (art 94(2)). Being a party to the Statute opens the Court's door (Statute, art 35), but it does not confer jurisdiction over any particular dispute. That takes consent.

Contentious jurisdiction: consent three ways

Article 36 of the Statute gives consent three forms, and the course supplies a worked example of each. First, the parties may refer a case jointly (art 36(1)): the North Sea Continental Shelf Case came to the Court this way. Second, jurisdiction covers matters specifically provided for in treaties in force (art 36(1)): the Bosnian Genocide Case rested on the compromissory clause in art IX of the Genocide Convention, which submits disputes about the interpretation, application or fulfilment of the Convention, including state responsibility for genocide, to the Court at the request of any party. Third, states may declare in advance that they accept the Court's compulsory jurisdiction (art 36(2)): the Whaling Case proceeded on this basis. Seventy-five states have such declarations. The United States withdrew its consent in 1986 after Nicaragua v United States. Australia reaffirmed its adherence in 2002, but only in relation to any other state accepting the same obligation, and its declaration does not apply to any dispute concerning or relating to the delimitation of maritime zones.

RULE. keyringThree keys open contentious jurisdiction (art 36): referral by the parties, a treaty clause in force, or coinciding compulsory jurisdiction declarations. Try each key on the facts; if none turns, the merits never arrive.

Trap. Reservations cut both ways. Compulsory jurisdiction operates between states accepting the same obligation, so a reservation in the applicant's own declaration can defeat the applicant's own claim. In the 2024 exam, a state whose declaration excluded disputes concerning rights grounded in tradition could not litigate the cultural clothing issue it wanted to raise, and was left with the remainder of its claim.

Standing and third states

Consent is necessary but not sufficient: the applicant must also have a legal right or interest in the claim, the requirement applied strictly in South-West Africa and Barcelona Traction. The Court's recent jurisprudence is less stringent where the obligation is owed to every party. In The Gambia v Myanmar the Court held that the common interest in compliance with the Genocide Convention entitles any state party, without distinction, to invoke another party's responsibility for breach of obligations erga omnes partes, regardless of any special interest, and South Africa v Israel followed that path. Third states have two doors: art 62 allows a state to request intervention where it has an interest of a legal nature that may be affected, granted only four times, while art 63 gives parties to a convention a right to intervene whenever its construction is in question, the route thirty-two states including Australia took in the case between Russia and Ukraine. Behind both sits art 59: the decision of the Court has no binding force except between the parties and in respect of that particular case.

Advisory opinions

The General Assembly, the Security Council and other authorised UN organs and agencies may request an advisory opinion on any legal question (Charter, art 96; Statute, art 65). States cannot. The request must contain an exact statement of the question on which the opinion is required. In the Climate Change Advisory Opinion the Court held that questions about states' obligations concerning protection of the climate system were legal questions, that the power to give an opinion is discretionary, that the discretion exists to protect the integrity of the judicial function, and that the Court refuses only where there are compelling reasons, which it found none of.

RULE. twistAdvisory jurisdiction inverts the contentious model: requests come from UN organs rather than states, no state consent is needed, and the opinion binds no one. The twist is discretion: the Court may refuse, but only for compelling reasons (Climate Change Advisory Opinion).

The answer that earns the marks

Attack plan. Five steps, in this order. 1. Access: both parties are states, and as UN members they are parties to the ICJ Statute (Charter art 93; Statute art 35). 2. Basis of consent: try the three art 36 keys against the facts. 3. Reservations: read every declaration exactly, remembering that a reservation limits the reserving state's own claims too. 4. Characterise the dispute: decide what the dispute is actually about, because that determines whether a reservation catches it. 5. Conclude on scope: say precisely which issues the Court can hear, then, and only then, go to the merits.

Trap. Merits first is an automatic structure fail. A jurisdiction question answered with a custom or treaty analysis, however good, has answered a different question. If the Court cannot hear the issue, the merits of that issue are worth nothing.

Worked example

State A's compulsory jurisdiction declaration accepts the Court's jurisdiction "in relation to any other State accepting the same obligation", but "does not apply to any dispute concerning rights grounded in tradition". Australia's declaration is in force with its maritime delimitation exclusion. State A, a UN member, wants to sue Australia over both a traditional clothing ban and unpaid student labour. Advise on jurisdiction.

A Pass answer says. The ICJ hears disputes between states. State A and Australia are both UN members, so both can appear before the Court, and both have made declarations under art 36(2), so the Court has compulsory jurisdiction. State A's reservation about tradition might be a problem for the clothing claim. So the Court probably has jurisdiction over at least some of the case. This reaches roughly the right endpoint, but it never cites art 93 or art 35, never tests the other art 36 bases, and treats the reservation as an afterthought instead of the decisive step.

An H1 answer says. As a UN member, State A is a party to the ICJ Statute (Charter, art 93), so the Court is open to it (Statute, art 35). There is no referral by the parties and no treaty clause on the facts, so jurisdiction depends on the coinciding art 36(2) declarations. Both are in force, and Australia's maritime exclusion is irrelevant to this dispute. The decisive step is State A's own reservation: compulsory jurisdiction operates only to the extent both declarations accept the same obligation, so the exclusion of disputes concerning rights grounded in tradition removes the traditional clothing claim, which is precisely a claim about rights grounded in tradition. The unpaid labour claim is not, on any fair characterisation, a dispute about tradition. The Court therefore has jurisdiction over the economic exploitation issue only, and the merits analysis should be confined accordingly.

Critical pitfalls and counter-arguments

Skipping the consent step. Membership of the UN puts a state before the Court's door (art 93), but only an art 36 basis opens it. State both, in that order.
Forgetting reciprocity. A state's own reservation confines its own claims. Read the applicant's declaration as carefully as the respondent's.
Misstating the veto. The rule is nine affirmative votes including the concurring votes of the permanent members, and it applies to substantive questions, not procedural ones (art 27).
Calling advisory opinions binding, or letting states request them. Requests come from UN organs under art 96, and the opinion binds no one, though the Court refuses to answer only for compelling reasons.
Ignoring art 59 when precedent talk creeps in. Decisions bind only the parties in that case. Earlier judgments guide the Court as subsidiary means under art 38(1)(d) of the Statute, expressly subject to art 59.

Take it to the practice bank

Jurisdiction is the opening move of nearly every international law hypothetical, and the Principles of Public Law practice bank makes you rehearse it: the cross-topic exam scenarios pair an ICJ jurisdiction step with custom, treaty and human rights issues in the style of past papers, each with a realistic Pass answer, an H1 model answer and the examiner's comments.

Practice prompts

Write the three-basis jurisdiction paragraph from memory, one sentence per basis, with North Sea, the Bosnian Genocide Case and the Whaling Case each attached to the correct one.
Draft Australia's position in a hypothetical where the applicant's declaration contains a subject-matter exclusion: argue the characterisation both ways, then conclude on which issues survive.
Write a ten-line evaluation for an essay footnote: is the permanent members' veto compatible with the sovereign equality principle in art 2, and what does your answer imply for reform of the Council's composition and voting?

Check your understanding

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