Study On The Institutional Participation Of Non-Governmental Organizations In International Law System

Though NGOs have not been given the formal legal status in the international law system, they have become one important participator in it with the development of globalization and have played a key role in the processes of international legislation, monitoring the implementation of international law and international judicial proceedings. At the same time, the institutional participation of NGOs in the international law processes has become a fact with the development of the institutional arrangements for NGOs in practice. However, the existing institutional arrangements have shown to be seriously insufficient and have prevented the practice of NGOs patticipation in international law because more and more NGOs began to participate in the international law processes. Therefore, it is necessary and beneficial to evaluate these existing institutional arrangements thoroughly. This dissertation tries to summarize these institutional arrangements to regulate NGOs participation in the international law system, find out and analyse the problems in the current institutional arrangements, and offer some proposals on the development of the institutional participation of NGOs in the international law syetem. This dissertation, besides the introduction and conclusion, includes five parts.Part Ⅰ, as the fundamental part, sketches out the basic issues concerning the institutional participation of NGOs in international law system. Firstly, this part argues the viewpoint that NGOs have become one important participator in international law system from the aspects of theories and practice, and discusses the interactive relationship between NGOs and inclusiveness of international law system. Then this part presents the concept of institutional participation of NGOs in international law system and interprets it in details. At last, this part investigates the development courses of the institutional arrangements regulating NGOs in history and analyses the values of the institutional participation of NGOs in international law system.Part Ⅱ summarizes and analyses the institutional arrangements and practice of NGOs participation in international legislation process. First of all, on the base of analyzing the impacts of NGOs participation on international legislation process and the development trends of the international legislation modes, this part mainly summarizes and discusses the institutional arrangements of NGOs participation in the legislation practice of international organizations and international conferences.Part Ⅲ summarizes and analyses the institutional arrangements and practice of NGOs participation in the process of monitoring the implementation of international law. This part firstly discusses the development trend of monitoring mechanism for the implementation of international law, and then analyzes the forms and values of NGOs participation. Finally, this part mainly summarizes and discusses the institutional arrangements of NGOs participation in the implementation of international human rights law, international environmental law and international humanitarian law.Part IV summarizes and analyses the institutional arrangements and practice of NGOs participation in the international judicial proceedings. Firstly, this part analyzes the impacts of NGOs on the development of international judicial proceedings in recent years. Then it discusses the four roles of NGOs as the victims, representatives of victims, amicus curiae and orgnizations having reliable knowledge of a particular situation in the international judicial proceedings. Lastly, this part mainly summarizes and discusses the detailed institutional arrangements of NGOs participation as the above four roles in the international judicial proceedings.Part V, as the natural ending of the dissertation, mainly discusses the issues of developments and improvements for NGOs participation in international law system. This part firstly evaluates the further development room for NGOs participation in the international law system from the perspectives of different arguments concerning the institutional participation of NGOs, the current situation of the institutional participation of NGOs, and the attitudes of different governmental organizations to NGOs institutional participation in international law system. On the base of the above arguments, this part finally proposes some suggestions on developing and improving the institutional participation of NGOs in international law system.All in all, the practice of NGOs participating in international law system is faced with the delimma on choosing the fomally institutional participation or developing informally practical participation. How to balance the both has become a unavoided issue the international law practice must to deal with, and this dissertation proposes some pragmatic viewpoints by analyzing the theories and practice of NGOs participation in the international law system.