[Ws2-jurisdiction] UN accountability and "international jurisdiction"

[Mueller, Milton L]

While we are all waiting for the show to begin, here is a popcorn-worthy article about the accountability of intergovernmental organizations.

Six years after thousands of Haitians died from a cholera epidemic that the UN now admits it played a role in creating, the Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a lower-court ruling that said the U.N. is immune from any kind of lawsuit under an international convention.
Here's an article about the court decision http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/world/americas/united-nations-cholera-haiti.html 

In 2011, lawyers with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti organized 5,000 cholera victims and their families to seek redress within the United Nations, but in 2013, its Office of Legal Affairs rejected their claims as "not receivable."
The lawyers then filed the case, Georges v. United Nations, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which ruled in favor of the United Nations in early 2015. Thursday's decision was in response to an appeal of that ruling. 
Lawyers arguing on behalf of the United Nations were from the United States Justice Department. They defended the world body's immunity under its Convention on Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, to which the United States is a signatory.

Somehow I think this is relevant to the jurisdiction issue, at least as some people conceive it. 

Dr. Milton L Mueller
Professor, School of Public Policy
Georgia Institute of Technology
Internet Governance Project 
http://internetgovernance.org/