Research Guides: A Basic Guide to International Environmental Legal Research: International Governmental Organizations

United Nations

Structure of the UN

The following chart shows the structure of the UN and some of the related sources of environmental law. The chart is described below.

The UN has six principal organs, five of which are depicted in the chart:

the Security Council
the General Assembly
the Economic and Social Council
the Trusteeship Council; (not depticted)
the UN Secretariat
the International Court of Justice

UN General Assembly Programs & Funds

Under the General Assembly, those programs and funds that encompass environmental concerns are:

UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade & Development)
UNCTAD is a permanent intergovernmental body established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1964. UCTAD provides analysis, facilitates consensus-building, and offers technical assistance to developing countries in order to help them to use trade, investment, finance, and technology as vehicles for inclusive and sustainable development.
UNDP (United Nations Development Programme)
UNDP works in about 170 countries and territories, helping to achieve the eradication of poverty, and the reduction of inequalities and exclusion. It helps countries to develop policies, leadership skills, partnering abilities, institutional capabilities and build resilience in order to sustain development results.
UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme)
The Environment Programme was established as a coordinating agency in 1972. It’s kind of like a village babushka; it finds out what everyone else is doing, acts as a matchmaker, and makes sure everyone behaves. In other words, it collects scientific information, coordinates the work of other UN agencies that are interested in the environment, and promotes international environmental law.
International Law Commission
The International Law Commission was established by the General Assembly, in 1947, to undertake the mandate of the Assembly, under article 13 (1) (a) of the Charter of the United Nations to "initiate studies and make recommendations for the purpose of ... encouraging the progressive development of international law and its codification."

UN Economic and Social Council

Under the Economic and Social Council, you will find:

UN Commission on Sustainable Development
The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was established by the UN General Assembly in December 1992 to ensure effective follow-up of United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Earth Summit.

UN Secretariat

Under the Secretariat you can find environmental related law and policy within:

United Nations Office of Legal Affairs (OLA)
- Treaty Section
  - Treaty Collection
Department of Public Information (now known as the Department of Global Communications)
- Library
  - Official Document System (ODS)

UN International Court of Justice

International Court of Justice Cases In contentious proceedings, when a dispute is brought before the Court by a unilateral application filed by one State against another State, the names of the parties in the official title of the case are separated by the abbreviation v. for the Latin versus (e.g., Cameroon v. Nigeria). When a dispute is submitted to the Court on the basis of a special agreement between two States, the names of the parties are separated by an oblique stroke (e.g., Indonesia/Malaysia).
International Court of Justice Advanced Search for Cases In the advanced case search, keyword searching has a default Or connector. The Exact-phrase queries are treated as having the AND operator between each word.An asterisk (*) represents any character sequence and a question mark (?) represents a single character. You can further filter by (1) Search in all cases / Search in specific cases; (2) Type of document; (3) Incidental proceedings; and (4) Date range.

Finding UN Documents

Use the UN Databases page to find UN Documents. The most important tools to use for finding UN documents are:

United Nations Treaty Collection Status and text of multilateral treaties deposited with the UN Secretary-General and those formerly deposited with the League of Nations. Contains bilateral and multilateral treaties.
United Nations Official Document System (ODS) UN documentation, daily journal and daily list of documents.
United Nations Digital Library "the Digital Library includes UN documents, voting data, speeches, maps, and open access publications. The platform provides access to UN-produced materials in digital format and bibliographic records for print UN documents starting in 1979." (UN web site)

UN Official Document System

The Official Document System (ODS) the largest system for acquiring UN documents. It contains all kinds of official UN documentation from 1993 to the present including the resolutions of the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, and Trusteeship Council from 1946 onwards. The UN is gradually adding documents older than 1993 to the database. It does not, however, contain press releases, sales publications, the United Nations Treaty Series or information brochures issued by the Department of Public Information.

The following image is a screen shot of the ODS's search template. symbol, words in the title, date of publication, full text, subject, date of release, the session or year, language, and type of full text search. The symbols are like call numbers for UN documents. This is an exact search. Words in the title is a keyword search. You don't have to know the whole correct title, but you do have to know at least one exact word that is in the title. The date of publication is the date the document was printed and disseminated. The full text search allows you to search the body of the documents. You can use the following operators to construct a full text search:

And (narrows search)
Or (expands search)
And Not (excludes terms following)
Sentence (proximity)
Truncate terms with *

You can truncate on the right, left, both ends or not at all. The languages are only the six official languages of the UN. The Type of full text search allows you to use the same search algorithms as you will find on Google.

United Nations Official Document System (ODS) UN documentation, daily journal and daily list of documents.

UN Treaty Collection

The UN Treaty Collection includes:

All multilateral treaties deposited with the Secretary- General of the United Nations (1946-present) and those formerly deposited with the League of Nations (1920-1946) - their latest status and a link to the full texts.
Bilateral and multilateral treaties registered with and published by the United Nations Secretariat in accordance with Article 102 up to a certain date - Detailed treaty references and full texts in all authentic language(s).

If there are several different copies of a treaty, the one from this collection is the one that should be cited.

United Nations Treaty Collection
Status and text of multilateral treaties deposited with the UN Secretary-General and those formerly deposited with the League of Nations. Contains bilateral and multilateral treaties.

Other UN Resources

World Health Organization (WHO)
The United Nations, since its inception, has been actively involved in promoting and protecting good health worldwide. Leading that effort within the UN system is the World Health Organization (WHO), whose constitution came into force on 7 April 1948 - a date we now celebrate every year as World Health Day. At the outset, it was decided that WHO’s top priorities would be malaria, women’s and children’s health, tuberculosis, venereal disease, nutrition and environmental pollution. Many of those remain on WHO’s agenda today.

Other IGOs

International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID)
The Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States created the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) when it came into force on October 14, 1966. ICSID is one of the five agencies of the World Bank Group. Its purpose is "...to provide facilities for conciliation and arbitration of investment disputes between Contracting States and nationals of other Contracting States..." (Convention Art. 1(2)) It is governed by the Administrative Council, which consists of one representative of each contracting state. ICSID's Secretariat is responsible for the general administration of the organization, serves as the registrar, authenticates arbitral awards, and certifies copies of those awards. There is a Panel of Conciliators and a Panel of Arbitrators that consist of ten members each. Cases are heard by Conciliation Commissions or Arbitral Tribunals. Conciliation Reports and Arbitral Awards can only be published with the consent of the parties. If, however, an Arbitral Award is not published in whole, ICSID will publish excerpts of the legal reasoning.