On 4 October 2024, a workshop on ‘The settlement of disputes to which international organizations are parties’ was organised by Professor August Reinisch and Professor Michael Waibel. This is the second edition of said workshop following on last year’s successful first edition.

International organizations encounter disputes with other international organizations, States, and private parties. They resolve them through negotiation, conciliation or other informal consensual dispute settlement means or through third-party dispute resolution, such as arbitration or judicial settlement. These issues are currently addressed by the International Law Commission (ILC) which started its deliberations on the topic ‘Settlement of disputes to which international organizations are parties’ in May 2023 and will turn to disputes between international organizations and private parties in 2025. The workshop focused on this latter category of disputes.

Participants presented short statements and answers on a range of interesting questions concerning the subject-matter which provided the starting point for insightful discussions in the workshop. In more detail, the workshop was divided into three sessions, each concerning a particular aspect of the topic. The first session referred to trends, frequency and changes in the types of disputes arising between international organizations and private parties, and the modes of settlement used in practice; the second was about the legal and policy requirements for settling disputes with private parties; while the third addressed the issues of possible improvements in settling such disputes.

The workshop was attended by officials/legal counsel of various international organizations with offices in Vienna, Austria and abroad, such as IAEA, IMO, IFAD, IFC, NATO, OPEC, OPEC Fund, OSCE and the World Bank.