Is "UN law" a thing?

Question

A certain book features a (former) US city which for story reasons is "administered" by the UN and thus falls under their laws, rather than US/state law.

Now, in context of the fictional work, I'm sure this can be made to work, but I am curious whether there is such a thing in real life as "UN law", and would it be sufficient to keep a city functional? It seems that "UN law" would be equivalent to "international law", but I wonder if that is comprehensive enough that a functional town/city of ~60k people could function without additional laws. Also, does any place like this exist in real life?

Questions

• Does "the law of the United Nations" reasonably correspond to any real legal system?
• If so, what laws would these be?
• Are there any real life places that are under such jurisdiction?

Answer 1

International law deals with the interaction of states, it doesn't have anything to say on municipial administration. There are various declarations, treaties, etc, that could reasonably be called "UN law", but these do at the most lay out general guiding principles for how states should treat their citizens, or handle very specicialized parts of life with a highly transnational component. Again, nothing on how to run a city.

The UN has never directly administered a city, nor is it meant to do so. As such, it doesn't have a standard municipial code it would apply it such a situation. Historically, the League of Nations did find itself with territority that needed adminstratration after WW1, but it handed it to specific countries to deal with it instead.

So in reality there isn't really anything coming close to the fictional situation described here.

Answer 2

When the UN administered Kosovo from 1999 to (de facto) 2008, Kosovo and all of its cities could technically be described as "under UN law." But this is misleading, because the UN expressly preserved all existing laws "insofar as they do not conflict with [international human rights standards and non-discrimination principles]." as described in this document. This was later amended to give full effect to Kosovo law as it was on March 22, 1989, but it was still subject to modifications by UN regulations and to international human rights standards.

At best, this was a mixture of UN law and Kosovo law, but in reality, I would tend to assume that UNMIK (the UN mission responsible for this work) tried to avoid directly legislating any more than absolutely necessary. As far as I can tell, they immediately worked to establish a democratic system of governance, holding local elections in 2000 and national elections the following year, as well as establishing an assembly (legislature) and other organs of democratic government. After that, the UN had at most a supervisory role in Kosovo's administration. Of course, that was the UN's plan all along - to establish a democratic government and then transfer most if not all of UNMIK's administrative responsibilities to that government.

This is illustrative of a broader point. The UN was not designed to function as a world government. While it does have the practical capacity to administer a territory for a time, this is an anomalous state of affairs. The immediate goal of any UN-administered territory with a non-trivial population will always be to establish, re-establish, or reinforce a democratic system of self-government and then transfer responsibilities into that government until the country is fully self-governing. A similar thing happened in Cambodia in 1992-93, and there have been a few other examples as well.

One or two of those examples don't fit this model, because they are essentially (or actually) demilitarized zones surrounded by some conflict, and will (presumably) be ceded to some country once the conflict no longer requires UN involvement (which may take a very long time to happen). It is difficult (and might be counterproductive) to set up a self-governing system for such a small territory, especially when that territory's ultimate fate may be at issue in the broader conflict. The end result is that these territories are under de facto martial law, but areas with more significant civilian population will usually be administered by one side or the other rather than by the UN. For example, as far as I can tell, both parts of Nicosia are administered by "regular" local governments, and it's just a thin strip of land that's officially UN-administered.

Answer 3

While there is currently no such thing as "UN Law" there are U.N. peacekeeping missions.

It isn't implausible that at some future date in a small geographic area, a U.N. peacekeeping mission could place a municipality under martial law, with the details of that martial law devised by the occupying peacekeeping mission military personnel, probably on the model of the laws in the countries of its senior officers.

Answer 4

The Vienna International Center in, unsurprising, Vienna, is an extraterritorial area with a complex set of legalities, including international laws and UN Treaties. In a sufficiently casual interpretation of the word, you could speak of "UN law" in this area.

Austrian law still applies to some degree, but the degree of extraterritoriality is strong enough that the UN has jurisdiction over its own staff and premises.

It is probably the real-world location closest to your scenario.

Answer 5

The Law (capital "L") requires a social contract to be established and upheld to be valid (otherwise it is not different from a dictatorship or other tyrant). This social contract is the tacit agreement between the People and the governing body about how they are giving away some of their freedoms in order to establish their government and the law, in return.

A UN law (note small case) is not equivalent to "international law" because citizens of the world have not come together to establish a social contract to form an international government to make such laws valid and enforceable. As such, the UN is better seen, legally, as an international "corporation", rather than a government.

Even UN Laws could be challenged or refused by its member nations, but to where will you go without a true international government established by the social contract (rather than a mere signature of an elected leader to become a member of the UN)?

The dictums of American government apply to it`s citizens who are under the social contract that was effectively made back in 1700s (through several historical mechanisms), but cannot (ethically) and should not (legally) be used to grant powers upwards to establish greater authority than to what the citizens agreed.