During the formative period of international organizations, attention was largely1 focused on their “internal” law, i.e. on their functions, powers and procedures under their constitutions and other rules. The assumption that international organizations do not have a common denominator encouraged such introspection. However — to misapply a famous quotation — no organization is an island, entire of itself. For their dealings with the outside world, whether in the sphere of public international law or in that of private law, the internal rules of organizations are relevant but not sufficient.2

Facilitative, non-punitive compliance machinery has a stronger theoretical basis now than ever before. Previously competing rationalist and managerial approaches to compliance come together in an interdependent world where we are confronting challenges that affect all States, including climate change, pandemic prevention and high seas conservation. In these contexts it is inherently rational for all States to play their part in addressing shared challenges by implementing their commitments; facilitative implementation and compliance arrangements on the model seen in the Paris Agreement will assist and support them in their efforts. The author investigates the benefits of the Paris Agreement model for compliance provisions in new international treaties including Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ), the international agreement on pandemic preparedness and response, and the plastics pollution treaty.

Many multilateral environmental treaties have established committees that monitor compliance and/or facilitate implementation. These committees can be triggered in a number of ways, e.g., when a State party seizes the committee concerning another State party’s compliance or implementation. This type of trigger resembles the most traditional judicial proceedings, as it opposes two States, and has the potential to lead to decisions of non-compliance. It is perceived to be more confrontational than facilitative. State-to-State triggers therefore sit in between judicial and non-judicial procedures, and between facilitation on the one hand and enforcement on the other. State-to-State triggers have only been used a handful of times. This chapter explores why such triggers have been sparsely used. It first explains how State-to-State triggers were established and describes the instacnes in which they have been used. It then identifies and discusses two main challenges faced by State-to-State triggers: challenges related to the perception and behaviour of States vis-à-vis such triggers, and challenges related to institutional design and procedural mechanisms of State-to-State procedures.

The end of the Cold War saw an aid and development agenda dominated by neoliberal ideology. In Oceania, two successive master strategies were implemented. The Pacific Plan was born at least partly out of the neoliberal turn, with an emphasis on spurring economic growth. It was succeeded in 2014 by a Framework for Pacific Regionalism that attempted to encompass a broader range of actors, including civil society groups, and appears to have been more successful in garnering enthusiasm for the regionalist project among stakeholders. Fiji, suspended from the Forum, began to forge an alternative approach to regional organization with the Pacific Islands Development Forum in 2013 as well as enhancing its own profile in the broader international sphere. Some of these developments are seen as contributing to a nascent ‘post-hegemonic regionalism’, suggesting that the countries of the Island Pacific, rather than the metropolitan powers, are beginning to take control of the regional agenda.

The functions of many international organizations include the establishment of standards of conduct for purposes other than the internal functioning of the organization. With the major exception of the European Communities — which are so different that they have to be left out of account here — the organizations in question do not have legislative authority in the sense of having the power to make the standards legally binding on all addressees. The powers of organizations like I.C.A.O., W.H.O. and W.M.O. to make technical regulations,1 or of organizations like O.E.C.D, or the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission to take decisions, come closest to such authority; however, even these powers are accompanied by qualifications — the possibility of refusal by opting out or by notification of inability to comply; the requirement of unanimity; or the recognized need for Members to meet national constitutional requirements before complying — which ensure, in effect, that no State is bound against its will. It is thus appropriate to apply to the entire subject a statement originally made with respect to one of its features, namely that “the great debate of State sovereignty versus world community pervades every aspect of it”.2

The twenty-first century has long been touted as the era in which the centre of gravity in world affairs will shift decisively towards the broad Asia-Pacific region. Concerns have centred on the rise of China and are implicit in the promotion of a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’. The Island Pacific now looms larger in geopolitical calculations, with various strategies of ‘rebalancing’, ‘stepping up’ and ‘resetting’ by traditional partners – the US, Australia and New Zealand, among others – in response to perceived challenges from China. The latter also asserts that its own development partnerships fall under the rubric of ‘South–South’ cooperation. Identity politics also figures in ongoing concerns surrounding Indonesia and West Papua – concerns that have become increasingly internationalized within Oceania and beyond. Both Indonesia/West Papua and the role of China raise issues of colonialism or neocolonialism, and both cases invite a reassessment of conventional postcolonial approaches.

This chapter considers the impact of the discovery of mandatory securitization on global security institutions. While ties of community and friendship, specifically at the sub-systemic level, ensure that the burden of mandatory securitization on the international community is relatively small, the international community – in the form of the UNSC – is obligated to act when (1) states or sub-systemic actors fail (note, in other-securitization they may fail for legitimate reasons), or (2) where there is no other designated protector. This chapter suggests that the UN charter amounts to a social contractual situation between the people of the world and the UNSC, rendering its duty to securitize – when conditions are met and there is no other protector – overriding. It goes on to examine the nature of these duties as they already exist by examining RtoP provisions. It shows that even if RtoP was in perfect working order and always acted on, it does not cover the moral duties of the UNSC regarding securitization; notably, it does not cover intent-lacking threats. Much like in Chapter 4 where mandatory securitization is used to update NATO’s Article 5, this chapter shows how mandatory securitization can refocus and thus help RtoP.

Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since the death of Sir Hersch Lauterpacht. At the time of his death, public international organizations were beginning to outnumber States, but no one foresaw the potential, both for growth and for variety, of that form of international activity; this may explain why he did not devote any major work to the place of international organizations in international law. At present, a considerably larger total of States is much more heavily outnumbered by the total of international organizations; a proportion of three to two is probably an unduly conservative estimate.

This chapter examines sub-systemic actor’s duties. It treats NATO as indicative of a collective defence organization and the European Union (before the Lisbon treaty that contains two collective defence clauses) as indicative of a collective security organization. This chapter argues that NATO has, if requested to help by a member country, a contractual (Article 5) – and thus overriding – duty to protect a member state, and when must cause is satisfied, with securitization. It is argued that Article 5 is now somewhat outdated and that – going forward – just reason (i.e., the existence of an objective existential threat) + macro-proportionality, and not armed attack, should be the threshold for collective political action. The obligation to use securitizing measures, however, rests with the satisfaction of must cause. This chapter also argues that in collective security organizations, the obligation to securitize insiders, rests with remedial responsibility triggered by ties of community/friendship, this means that unlike in collective defence organizations, the obligation to securitize insiders can be overridden.

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, almost all Pacific Islands and their people were firmly under colonial rule and therefore in no position to dictate the terms of regional organization. This was left to the founders of the first substantive regional organization, the South Pacific Commission, established in 1947 by Australia, New Zealand, the UK, the US, France and the Netherlands. The founders did, however, anticipate the involvement of Island people through the South Pacific Conference. This chapter focuses largely on the period of ‘colonial regionalism’ while also considering the wider context of post-war decolonization and the Cold War. Another important development in terms of defining the regional border with Southeast Asia came with the annexation of Netherlands New Guinea by Indonesia. Now known officially as the provinces of Papua and West Papua, they remain part of Indonesia, although self-determination issues are by no means settled.

How regions emerge as political, social and economic entities, how they are conceptualized and how they come to provide a basis for identities around which political relations are configured are the major themes of this chapter. It includes an account of the idea of regional society in conceptualizing regional formations as well as attention to the role of area studies in the post-war period of decolonization and the Cold War. Also implicated in the emergence of area studies is the modernization paradigm that continues to underpin ideas about regional development in the global South. The final section addresses the framework for analysis offered by postcolonial approaches and suggests that the lens needs to be adjusted to take account of important instances of non-Western colonialism in Oceania while also offering a more critical perspective on the often taken-for-granted binaries of colonizer–colonized, domination–subordination, and repression–resistance.

From the Forum’s early years, tensions emerged between national interests and the regionalist agenda, between Australia’s and New Zealand’s role vis-à-vis Island members, between conservative Polynesian leaders and the more newly independent Melanesian members and the question of whether the Forum and the South Pacific Commission should merge into a Single Regional Organization. Many issues were influenced by France’s role in the region, with decolonization and nuclear testing among the most pressing political concerns. Why France was so resistant to change, and so determined to continue its nuclear testing program, may be understood partly in terms of its quest for status and prestige in the broader sphere of global politics in the post-war period. Reflections on French policy in Oceania also shed light on France’s rather ambivalent position within the Western alliance. The chapter also examines how the (partial) decolonization of northern Oceania under US control brought another dimension to regional organization.