International Organizations
International Organizations

Two types:
• Intergovernmental (IGO)
– Able to enact “supranational law”, which is legal
control, derived from either a treaty or exerted
by an IGO, which nations agree be bound by in
addition to their own domestic laws
• Non-governmental (NGO)
– No international legal authority, can only
provide persuasive recommendations
Intergovernmental Orgs (IGOs)

An IGO
1. has international legal status (privileges,
immunities, rights, and duties) that is
based upon its founding charter,
constitution or statutes. As such, an IGO
can enter into agreements with other
IGOs or independent states
2. has a legislative body that creates legal
acts (decisions, resolutions, directives,
etc.) that may bind the IGO and its
member states under international law.
Most of these legislative acts do not
supersede national law
IGOs cont’d
3. may have a dispute resolution
mechanism or body that is empowered to
resolve disputes among its member
states
4. may have an executive body that
facilitates the operations of the IGO
IGOs

IGO publications are often found in both
official print reporters and through the
organization’s website
• IGOs disseminate materials that qualify as
primary sources, such as research
findings, statistics/data sets, project
reports, news items, and policy statements
• good sources of comparative information
between individual countries
The UN—an IGO?

Legal Status
• UN Charter

Legislative body
• General Assembly

Dispute Resolution Mechanism
• ICJ/Security Council

Executive body
• Secretariat (Secretary General)
IMF, World Bank, IBRD, IFC, etc.
Economic IGOs established at the
Bretton Woods conference in 1945
 Do not generally produce “hard law” but
can be very useful sites if you are
working in either development, human
rights, or international finance
 IMF’s Selected Decisions and
Documents

• http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sd/index
.asp
Exercise #1

Locate the IMF’s Articles of Agreement
in a US treaty source

Does the IMF meet the 4 requirements
of an intergovernmental organization?
Nongovernmental Orgs (NGOs)

NGOs:
• Organizations that operate INDEPENDENT of states
• not endowed with any international legal powers
• are persuasive groups, and may have “consultative”
status with larger IGOs.
• often refered to internationally as “civil society
organizations”

NGO publications often constitute “grey
literature”—not usually available through
traditional sources so internet may be best way to
access them
• These documents often DO NOT COME UP IN
GOOGLE SEARCHES! Careful research requires
you to actually browse the websites themselves
Locating NGOs

To locate relevant NGOs in a particular
area, try the advanced search feature of
the UN’s NGO branch database of civil
society partnerships
• http://esango.un.org/civilsociety

Benefit of this database over Google is
that all listed organizations are registered
with the UN, therefore adds legitimacy to
their organization—however, be aware this
database only contains info from groups
“approved” by the UN
Locating NGO “grey literature”


Locate relevant NGOs for your topic and
identify their website
On their website, look for a link to
something like the following:
•
•
•
•

Publications
Library
Documents
Legal Information
If available, use search tools to limit to your
country or topic; avoid full text searching
wherever possible!!!
On the Amnesty
site, select “Library”
and then use the
Advanced Search
feature to limit by
country, topic, etc
On Human Rights Watch,
select “Publications” and then
utilize drop down menus for
Issue and Country