Summary: Legal Status Of UN Peacekeeping

Section 2: Legal status of UN Peacekeepers

As other UN personnel, in the performance of their duties, the UN Peacekeepers enjoy the jurisdictional immunity (§ 1) and the functional immunity (§ 2).

§ 1. Jurisdictional immunity

The following development will mainly look at the theoretical justification of jurisdictional immunity while leaving aside its application or problems related to it, which will be explored in subsequent chapters. When one analyses the status of the UN peacekeepers on the soil of a foreign state, it is very obvious that they are treated differently from any other foreign visiting forces and troops which can merely be stationed on foreign soil . In normal situations, under international law, sovereign states have absolute

For example, paragraph 15 of the Model Status of Forces Agreement for Peacekeeping Operations, specifies that the UN Peacekeeping missions, as a subsidiary organ of UN, enjoy the privilege and immunities set out in the SOFA. This means that, in my point of view, each agreement has to specify the privileges and immunities granted to UN Peacekeepers in a given country. The same paragraph 15, provides that article II of the Convention on Privileges and Immunity applies to UN Peacekeepers , which provides that UN property and assets are to be fully immune from legal process in the host State . Thus, the agreements (SOFA) signed between United Nations and the host countries are indispensable in most cases to the United Nations’ ability to achieve mission mandates free from undue interference from the host State.

In general, the functional immunity finds its basis in articles 104 and 105 of the UN Charter. The functional immunity granted to UN Peacekeepers is derived from their status as subsidiary organs of the UN. Immunity granted is strictly functional, granted for the purpose of enabling the UN operations to function free from host State interference

M. Bothe and T. Dorschel argue that “reference to officials in article 105 (2) UN Charter or the Convention on Privileges and Immunities could be construed broadly in line with its object and purpose, namely the ability of the organization to function independently . They contend that this could be extended to encompass UN military contingents given that they form part of a subsidiary organ of the United Nations and on grounds of functional necessity ”. And indeed, despite the SOFAs that confer the power of prosecution to troop-contributing country, the UN Peacekeepers act directly under the orders of United Nations. Therefore, they should be treated as its workers/staff