The Study On The International Legal Status Of Ingos

So far, INGOs have been active in the international community for more than one and a half centuries, and more than that, in the recent years, they have been penetrating the international community from cover to cover sharply, especially in the world conferences and their five-year and ten-year review conferences. They often take part in the UN meetings held for the governments and a series of Consultation Mechanisms, and in this way they have set up a close partnership with the UN system. During the past twenty years, the relationship between UN and INGOs has changed from"consultative arrangements"to"partnership". The post and present UN Secretary-Generals also recognized publicly that INGOs have become important partners with UN and governments.The above-mentioned facts have been going on in the context of sharp changes happened in the global economy, politics and society. As the active actors in the international community, they have put a new factor into the global governance, and provide a new way to solve the global issues. But the participation of them has brought out an important dilemma in the international community: their participation has not been in consistent with the widly recognized consultative relationship, which has been given to them for many years, and then another problem appeared: if it is necessary to rebuild the international legal status of them in the international order? Up till to now, there is no publicly-accepted answer to this question. Different legal scholors will have different different answers. In this context, I started my study. To the above-mentioned questions, I decided to write out my dissertation in six chapters with an introduction and a conclusion:Chapter One: the Overview of INGOs.There are three parts in this chapter. At first, I analyzed the definition and the characterizations of INGOs. Then, I studied the classification about them. At last, I studied the evolution of them thoroughly. This chapter is the basis of the following five chapters.Chapter Two: the Legal Status of INGOs in International Law.As everyone knows that this is still an unsettled problem which has perplexed so many scholars of international law. I divided the whole chapter into two parts: in the first part, I studied the evolution of the subjects of the international law, especially comparing and analyzing the views of the famous sholars of international law at home and abroad, and according to these different views, I concluded that some famous INGOs have been authorized the legal status in international law, but their legal status in international law is subordinated compared with the legal status of nations; in the second part, I analyzed in detail the rights and obligations(or responsibilities) of INGOs in the international conventions; at last, I concluded that some international convensions have endowed some rights to INGOs and asked them to obey some obligations with clear or obscure clauses, which are partly the evidence for the legal status in international law.Chapter Three: the international status of INGOs in the UN System.In this chapter, I analyzed the legal status of INGOs in the UN system and the INGOs'participation to world conferences held in recent years in an empirical way. At last, I concluded that the relationship between UN system and INGOs has transformed from"consultation status"to"pariticipation".Chapter Four: the legal status of the INGOs in the international judicial organs.To be a part of the international judicial activities has been considered the main component between the relationship of INGOs and IGOs. In 1947, Sir Hersch Lauterpacht observed that:"It would thus appear that there is nothing inherent in the structure of international law which prevents individuals and, generally, persons other than states from being parties to proceedings befores international tribunals". He was right. States are increasingly institutinalising the participation of non-state actors in international proceedings. This is particularly ture concerning regional human rights mechanisms. In this chapter, I tried to study the participation of INGOs in the international judicial organs or quasi international judicial organs in order to learn something about the international legal status in the international community.Chapter Five: the status and the function of the INGOs in the formation of the international law.In this chapter, I studied the INGOs'participation in the making of international law in an empirical way. I divided this chapter into four parts. In the first part, I studied the INGOs'participation in the making of the international human right law. In the second part, I studied the INGOs'participation in the making of the international humanitarian law. In the third part, I studied the INGOs'participation in the making of the international environment law. In the fourth part, I studied the INGOs'participation in the making of the international trade law. At last, I concluded that a large number of INGOs have played an active role in the making of international law in spite of the absence of normally recognized legal status in international law. On the contrary, the undecided legal status in interntiaon law has given them the flexibility to take part in the complete process of the making of international law. The fact is that what they are interested in is participation, not legal status. With this, we can see that they have penetrated the making, implementation and supervision of international law, which has exerted a great influence on international law definitely.Chapter six: the status quo and the tendency of the international legal status of the INGOs.I divied this chapter into two parts: in the first part, I analyzed the current situation of the international legal status of INGOs in a dialectical way and, in the second part I prediced the tendency of the international legal status of INGOs in the future.At last, I thought that, with the result of the last conversion of the international law and the national law, the legal subjects of them will definitely be conversed reciprocally and melted into a whole one. Of course, this is a long process which upon the condition of the continous development of INGOs, the needs of the international community and recognization of the states. In one words, with the deepening of the globalization, the strengthening of human being's cooperation, the INGOs will become the international legal subjects in future. To this, we, at least, will have a legitimate expectation.ConclusionIn the conclusion, I summed up the present characteristics of the international legal status of INGOs. I thought that they were derivative, limited, different and changeable. Generally speaking, the participation of INGOs in the intenational community has created a paradox with their present international leag status, which makes it necessary to build up a new legal status for them. According to the present three modes (consultative mode, Europe mode and self regulation mode) of the international legal status, I tried to build up a new mode which was named"active participation mode", and I analyzed it in the last paragraph.