The Insolvency of International Organizations and the Legal Position of Creditors: Some Observations in the Light of the International tin Council Crisis

Abstract

The quest for clear-cut legal structures in corporate bodies is not only propelled by dogmatic interest, but often also from shaken confidence and frustrated expectations. When in October 1985 a leading official of the International Tin Council, the manager of its buffer stock, declared that the Council was henceforward no longer able to meet its financial commitments and when subsequently no agreement on the settlement of outstanding claims could be reached, the Council's creditors as well as its members were faced with a host of legal issues for which the general rules of public international law provide no easily extricable guidance. In the face of the insolvency of an international organization the recourse to measures of liquidation as provided for in national company laws or the determination of the position of the organization's creditors vis-a-vis the member States cannot follow the broad path of consolidated State practice and legal doctrine.