COMPENDIUM OF SUMMARIES OF JUDICIAL DECISIONS IN ENVIRONMENT RELATED CASES

INTERNATIONAL

International - Nuclear Weapons

LEGALITY OF THE USE BY A STATE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN ARMED CONFLICT: REQUEST FOR ADVISORY OPINION BY THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION

INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE 8 JULY 1996

Introduction

The Director General of the World Health Organisation, by a letter dated 27 Aug. 1993 sought an advisory opinion from the ICJ. The question reads as follows: "In view of the health and environmental effects, would the use of nuclear weapons by a State in war or other armed conflict be a breach of its obligations under international law including the WHO Constitution?"

The Court considered that there are three conditions which must be satisfied in order to found the jurisdiction of the Court when a request for an advisory opinion is submitted to it by a specialised agency: The agency requesting the Opinion must be duly authorized under the Charter to request opinion from the Court, and the opinion requested must be on a legal question, and this question must be one arising within the scope of the activities of the requesting agency.

Held

The first two conditions had been met. With regard to the third, the Court found that although according to its Constitution, the World Health Organisation is authorized to deal with the effects on health of the use of nuclear weapons, or of any other hazardous activity, and to take preventive measures aimed at protecting the health of populations in the event of such weapons being used or such activities engaged in, the question put to the Court in the present case relates not to the effects of the use of nuclear weapons on health, but to the legality of the use of such weapons in view of their health and environmental effects. The Court further pointed out that international organisations do not, unlike States, possess a general competence, but are governed by the "principle of speciality" that is to say, they are invested by the States which create them with powers, the limits of which are a function of the common interests whose promotion those States entrust to them. Besides, the WHO is an international organisation of a particular kind- a "specialised agency" forming a part of a system based in the Charter of the United Nations, which is designed to organise international co-operation in a coherent fashion by bringing the United Nations invested with powers of general scope, in to relationship with various autonomous and complementary organisations, invested with sectorial powers. The Court therefore concluded. that the responsibilities of the WHO are necessarily restricted to the sphere of public "health" and can not encroach on the responsibilities of other parts of the United Nations system. And that there is no doubt that the questions concerning the use of force, the regulation of armament and disarmament are within the competence of the United Nations and lie outside that of the specialised agencies.

The request for an advisory opinion submitted by the WHO thus does not relate to a question which arises "within the scope of the activities" of the organisation.