Breakfast Briefing with Christiane Ahlborn

Between Idealism and Pragmatism: Contested Government Representation in International Organizations

Abstract

Government representation is crucial for the functioning of international organizations. An international organization comes to life through the representatives of its member states: they negotiate and vote on behalf of their governments within its organs, and often play a key role in implementing its decisions at the domestic level. Still, the constituent instruments of international organizations do generally not contain explicit rules on the representation of their member states. Instead, international organizations use their so-called credentials procedures to ascertain the validity of government representation. While the recognition of credentials is a straightforward technical process, it becomes politicized in cases of contested and competing claims to governmental authority. At the UN General Assembly, the Credentials Committee has repeatedly deferred determining who represents Afghanistan and Myanmar, resulting in inconsistent approaches across the UN system. Based on historical and recent cases, this briefing discusses the reasons for the often-fragmented practice in which international organizations address situations of contested government representation.

About the Speaker

Christiane Ahlborn is an Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Trinity College Dublin’s School of Law with extensive practice experience. She is a member of the Coordinating Committee of the European Society of International Law Interest Group on International Organizations and the International Law Association (ILA) Committees on ‘Business and Human Rights’ and ‘Urbanisation and International Law – Potentials & Pitfalls’, a Co-Chair of the United Nations Law Committee of the ILA’s American Branch, and she is on the Editorial Board of the Arab Yearbook of Public and Private International Law. Before joining Trinity, Christiane worked as a Legal Officer (Public International Law and Treaty Law) in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Office of Legal Affairs and the Codification Division of the UN Office of Legal Affairs in New York. She also held academic positions at the Vienna School of International Studies and the University of Amsterdam.

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