Un Fact-Finding and Human Rights Complaints*

Abstract

N September 1963, President Kennedy sent two American officials to have 'a fresh look' at the situation in South Vietnam. Mr Joseph Mendenhall was an experienced diplomat who had previously served as political counsellor in the United States Embassy in Saigon. MajorGeneral Victor Krulak was the Pentagon's top-ranking expert in counterinsurgency warfare. The two men spent an exhausting four days in South Vietnam and then returned to Washington with such diametrically opposed assessments that President Kennedy was moved to ask, 'You two did visit the same country, didn't you? ' 1 The difficulty about facts is that there are so many of them. Facts, or alleged facts, pour into the United Nations headquarters in a continuous flood-speeches of delegates; conversations, formal and informal, between representatives of governments and UN officials; written communications from other international bodies, governments, would-be governments, non-governmental organisations (some formally recognised, some not), and individuals; reports from UN agencies and officials in the field; information in books, monographs, journals, newspapers, or otherwise in the public domain. The difficulty for the United Nations is not how to accumulate information but how to avoid being suffocated by it; and, secondly, how to distinguish between objective facts and slanted information provided for partisan purposes. Nor is the UN short of standing fact-finding machinery. The General Assembly has expressly conferred fact-finding responsibilities on the Interim Committee (the so-called Little Assembly) and the Peace Observation Commission, and has established both a Panel for Inquiry and Conciliation and a Register of Experts for fact-finding. The principal UN organs, including the International Court of Justice, may create ad hoc bodies for enquiry or fact-finding as needed. In addition, many UN members are parties to the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 for the peaceful settlement of disputes, or to bilateral, regional, or general treaties providing for international enquiry. UN fact-finding may be classified in various ways; by the type of body set up to establish the facts, by the kind of situation to be investi-