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32 N.Y.U. J. Int'l L. & Pol. 725 (1999-2000)
Accrediting Democracies: Does the Credentials Committee of the United Nations Promote Democracy through Its Accreditation Process, and Should It

handle is hein.journals/nyuilp32 and id is 735 raw text is: ACCREDITING DEMOCRACIES: DOES THE CREDENTIALS COMMITTEE OF THE UNITED NATIONS PROMOTE DEMOCRACY THROUGH ITS ACCREDITATION PROCESS, AND SHOULD IT?. MATrHEV GRIFIN* I. INTRODUCTION Between 1991 and 1999, the United Nations (U.N.) ac- credited five governments to participate in the General Assem- bly as representatives of their respective states, despite those governments' lack of effective territorial control. In the cases of Haiti, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Liberia, and Afghanistan, the Credentials Committee of the General Assembly refused to accredit the representatives of the governments in effective control-i.e., the authorities actually exercising power in the state-and instead seated in the General Assembly representa- tives of former regimes possessing few, if any, of the attributes of government. These credentials decisions decidedly di- verged from previous practice in two notable respects. First, in contrast to the decisions during the Cold War, the five creden- tials decisions of the 1990s and their attendant debates re- flected a high degree of consensus about which governments to accredit and how credentials determinations should be made. Second, the decisions constituted a departure from the Credentials Committee convention of seating governments in effective control of United Nations Member State (Member State) territories. What accounts for this change in direction, this Note argues, is the growing interest in using the creden- tials process as a vehicle to promote democracy. That is to say that though democracy alone cannot explain any one of the credentials decisions, the credentials decisions in these five cases ultimately turned upon whether the applicant govern- ment was democratic and whether the applicant government * Associate, Whitman Breed Abbott & Morgan, LLP; J.D., New York University School of Law; M.Sc. International Relations, London School of Economics; BAL, Williams College. I would like to thank Professors Thomas Franck and Gregory Fox for their insightful comments and assistance. 725 Imaged with the Permission of N.Y.U. Journal of International Law and Politics

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