Relative International Legal Personality of Non-State Actors

Functionalist analysis is now the controlling approach for assessing which non-state actors enjoy limited, relative international legal personality in the sense of having capacity for international rights and obligations. While on the one hand, conservative authorities might still insist that the only true subjects of international law are states, on the other hand, there is considerable pedigree for engaging non-state actors as international legal persons. The difficult for legal clarity and certainty has been to distinguish those entities that are legal persons from those that are not, which rights, duties and obligations they hold on the international plane, and which entities are objective persons erga omnes. Although some schools of thought suggest that once an entity is identified as a legal person, it enjoys that personality as an objective, erga omnes nature, actual practice is more equivocal, and a great many non-state actors exist as quasi-persons or hybrid entities that blur the distinctions. These entities are considered international legal persons for some purposes but not others, or only in relation to certain actors, but not others. This article will examine the variable and disaggregated international legal personality of non-state actor quasi-persons, with a view to learn some lessons about how personality for these entities is currently understood.