For example, UNHCR’s mandate is renewed by the General Assembly every five years (G S.

Goodwin-Gill, The Refugee in International Law (2nd ed., 1996) 214 fh 41). The General Assembly has also

modified and expanded UNHCR’s mandate in the course o f the years, for example to include some

responsibilities for providing assistance to internally displaced persons (Ibid., at 264 ff).

55 GA Res. 1714 (XVI), 19 December 1961, and in FAO Conference Res. 1 /6 1 ,2 4 November 1961.

56 For example, the General Regulations o f WFP state that the ‘Programme (...) shall, drawing on the

legal personality o f the United Nations, have legal capacity... ’ (emphasis added). Some trace the ultimate legal source o f their personality in Art. 104 o f the Charter conferring personality on the UN

(Rudolph, Seidl-Hohenveldem, ‘Article 104’, in Simma, supra note 50, 1125 at 1131). Goodwin-Gill

states that ‘clearly, by derivation and by intention, UNHCR does enjoy international personality’

(Goodwin-Gill, supra note 54 at 216). On the personality o f UNRWA, see: Dale,. ‘U.N.R.W.A. — A

Subsidiary Organ o f the United Nations’, 23 IC Lf) (1974) 576. In support o f the legal personality o f

subsidiary organs, see Brownlie, supra note 4, at 62 and 680. Recent practice that bespeaks the

international legal personality is the conclusion o f agreements by the ad Tribunals with states for the

detention o f individuals sentenced by the Tribunals (See, for example, the agreements o f die International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda with Benin and Mali, Fact Sheet no. 7, at www.ictr.orgl. A restrictive view o f the extent o f the legal personality o f subsidiary organs is held by Hilf, ‘Article 22’, in

resettlement, as the General Assembly may determ ine’.57 U N IC EF, on the other hand, m ust act ‘in accordance with such principles as may be laid down the by the Econom ic and Social Council and its Social Comm ission’.58 Rules o f treaty interpretation do no t apply to the interpretation o f these mandates given that they are acts o f an UN organ and n o t treaties ‘having certain special characteristics’.59

T he authority and control that parent organs can exercise on their subsidiary agencies should n o t obscure the fact that subsidiary agencies may enjoy a large measure o f autonomy. Indeed, in the Effect o f Awards case the ICJ even accepted that in principle the decisions o f the U N Administrative Tribunal - a subsidiary organ o f the General Assembly — can bind the General Assembly itself, as long as the General Assembly had intended to confer these powers on the Tribunal.60 T he degree o f autonom y that subsidiary agencies concretely possess depends on the terms o f their mandates, but also on institutional practice. In particular, the creation o f a professional civil service and the process o f bureaucratisation have contributed to buttressing the autonom y o f the specialised programmes. With time these programmes have developed distinct institutional identities and organisational ethoi, while inter-agency competition often characterises their interactions.61 The size o f their staff, their budget, the range and im portance o f the operations they lead are by now often larger than those o f the putatively m ore autonom ous specialised agencies.62 The field offices o f U N H C R o r U N IC EF, w ith their display o f agency’s flags, pictures o f the head o f the institution, and various gadgets and posters with the institutional logo, visually illustrate these developments. Specialised programm es, like other international organisations, have thus grown m ore powerful as a result o f the concurrent affirmation o f ‘the legitimacy

57 GA Res. 428 (V) at paras. 3 and 9. 58 GA Res. 57 (I) at paras. 3 (a) and 9. 59 Certain 'Expenses, supra note 40, at 157. 60 Effect of Awards case, supra note 34, at 60-61.

61 Barnett and Finnemore, ‘The Politics, Power and Pathologies o f International Organizations’, 53 Int.

Org. (1999) 699 at 704 ff.

62 A differentation between specialised agencies and specialised programmes in terms o f budget and functions is therefore not possible (Dagoiy, ‘Les rapports entre les institutions specialisees et 1’

organisation des Nations Unies’, 73 RGDIP (1969) 286 at 291). UNICEF, for example, had 5827

employees and a budget o f nearly US$ 1 billion in 1998 (http: / / www.unicef.org/emergl UNHCR had

5200 staff members and a budget o f US$ 1,27 billion in 1999

(http:// www.unhcr.ch/un&ref/numbers/numbers.htm). FAO, on the other hand, which is a specialised agency, had 4,300 members staff and a biennial budget o f US$ 650 million in 1998-1999 (http://www.fao.org/UNFAO/WHATITIS.HTM) . WFP’s budgpt was largpr than that o f one o f its parent bodies, FAO (US$ 1,4 billion in 1999, http://www.wfjp.org/info/Intro/donors/index.html).

o f the rational-legal authority they embody’ and o f ‘control over technical expertise and inform ation’.63

An im portant difference between specialised agencies and specialised programm es remains that the latter rely principally on voluntary contributions from states to finance their operations and are therefore potentially m ore susceptible to pressure from donor countries.64 I t would be w rong to conclude, however, that specialised programmes are m ore easily manoeuvrable by states; on the contrary, it may often be easier for them to evade the political control o f states.65 Whereas the plenary organs o f specialised agencies include representatives o f m em ber states and are usually entrusted w ith a function o f control and general policy-making, specialised programmes are n o t constitutionally subject to forms o f direct control by m em ber states. Their conduct is subject to indirect scrutiny by states through the parent organ, usually the General Assembly, o r the Econom ic and Social Council.66

T he General Assembly tends to discharge its functions o f control over subsidiary agencies in a cursory manner. For example, with respect to UNHCR, Goodwin-Gill has observed that its resolutions are ‘rarely consistent in their language, and their rationale, too, is often hidden’ 67 H e has underscored the ‘after the event’ nature o f the interventions o f the General Assembly simply to rubber-stam p changes in institutional practice and competence that have already occurred. The General Assembly therefore seems to have ‘established subsidiary organs that act as specialised agencies w ithout having that qualification’.68 As is discussed elsewhere, the erosion a n d /o r abdication o f responsibilities on the part o f the political organs o f the UN, and the attendant em powerm ent o f the institutional bureaucracy is a phenom enon o f great practical significance.69 Seen in this light, the practice o f the General Assembly seems incongruous: in the area o f standard-setting, it stretches its role to the limit, or even

63 Bamett, Finnemore, supra note 61 at 707.

64 An important difference between specialised agencies and subsidiary agencies is that contributions to

the latter are on a voluntary rather than treaty-based assessed basis (see D. Williams, The Specialised

Agencies and the United Nations (1987) at 43). 65 See Chapter V.4.

66 White observes that, while specialised agencies have a reporting obligation to the Economic and