International Organizations and the “soft law”

Abstract

International non-biding acts play an important role in international relations. States often prefer the acts of “soft law” as a basis for their future relations, because of their advantages in contrast with “hard law”. Such acts are flexible and easier to correct. Undoubtedly, the non-biding character of the “soft law” becomes the main reason why politically and socially different countries choose it to decide key world problems.
Even though the “soft law” acts are not sources of international law they do attract compliance by interested members of the international community.
“Soft law” is widely and effectively used on the global level. Resent tendencies demonstrate ability of “soft law” to be used as a foundation of different international institutions like, for example, intergovernmental forums. Being incorporated by the acts of “soft law” such forums however assume some elements of international organizations. They have a structure of bodies, there are independent from their member-states’ will, they correlate with another international organizations, and they have a control system to observe the compliance of forum’s recommendations. Furthermore, some of them transform into ordinary international organizations.
Nevertheless forum’s decisions have a non-biding character, the conditions of membership force states to follow these recommendations. Thus, the implementation of decisions is more useful for states than their defiance. In line with this the present research intends to focus on the investigation and comparison of international intergovernmental forums to international organizations, to affirm the conclusion that some of them have the elements of international personality.