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UN Representation Disputes: A Case Study of Cambodia and a New Accreditation Proposal for the Twenty-First Century |
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Suellen Ratliff |
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| The United Nations approves and accepts the
representatives of its member states through a
procedural accreditation process involving its
Credentials Committee and the General Assembly.
In most cases, the Credentials Committee verifies
that the representative's credentials are in
order and the General Assembly approves the
representative as a matter of course.
Complications arise, however, when a member state
experiences an internal dispute resulting in
rival governments that each indicate their intent
to represent the member state in the UN. Faced
with multiple sets of credentials for a single
member state, the Credentials Committee and the
General Assembly must choose which government
will represent the member state. Though the
General Assembly addressed the resolution of
representation disputes almost fifty years ago,
it failed to adopt sufficiently structured
guidelines to achieve a consistent process for
resolving these disputes. As a result, member
states within the Credentials Committee and the
General Assembly may manipulate the process by
applying completely different guidelines to each
representation dispute. Such manipulations may
further the political interests of individual
member states, but they also may harm the UN's
integrity by seating representatives who do not
truly represent the interests of the member
state's population. This Comment highlights the inadequacies of the existing UN process used to resolve representation disputes by analyzing the evolution of the current guidelines and their application to three representation disputes in Cambodia since 1970. Comparison of the different criteria applied in each dispute demonstrates how member states manipulate the accreditation process to achieve political ends, even when the chosen representative clearly does not represent the people of the member state. In addition to this historical analysis, the Comment examines the emergence and importance of human rights law in the international community, and the role human rights should play in the resolution of UN representation disputes. Ultimately, this Comment offers a new Accreditation Proposal for resolving UN representation disputes. The Proposal requires both the Credentials Committee and the General Assembly to apply a four-factor balancing test in every future representation dispute, and includes, as one of these factors, an explicit consideration of human rights. Application of this balancing test to the three Cambodian representation disputes shows the effectiveness of a consistent and structured process for determining UN representation. |
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Copyright
© 1999 by California Law Review, Inc. |
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