Beyond Residual Functions: The IRMCT, the ‘Stateless Eight’, and the Human Rights Obligations of Security Council Subsidiaries

On 10 December 2025, the Safety Council as soon as once more debated the way forward for the Worldwide Residual Mechanism for Legal Tribunals (IRMCT). As in earlier classes, delegations diverged sharply of their assessments of the tribunal: France, the UK, and the Republic of Korea underscored the significance of retaining worldwide authority over issues like sentence enforcement and early launch, whereas the Russian Federation decried the court docket’s $60 million price range amidst what it described as “a totally empty judicial basket.”

But beneath these disagreements lay a degree of consensus. Virtually all delegations signalled tacit help for winding up the IRMCT and transferring its remaining capabilities to “competent nationwide authorities.”

The IRMCT is prone to stop operations within the close to future. Its closure will mark the formal finish of the advert hoc tribunal period of worldwide prison justice. For a lot of observers, the IRMCT has lengthy appeared as much less of a dwelling establishment and extra as an administrative afterthought to the dramatic legacies of the Worldwide Legal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the Worldwide Legal Tribunal for the previous Yugoslavia (ICTY). It’s, in spite of everything, solely tasked with performing these tribunals’ “residual” capabilities.

What this narrative obscures, nevertheless, is that the IRMCT continues to train decisive management over human lives. For over 15 years, eight males — indicted by the ICTR however both totally acquitted or launched after finishing their sentences — have remained trapped in authorized and humanitarian limbo as a direct consequence of the IRMCT’s failure to safe their protected relocation. Often known as the “Stateless Eight,” these males rely solely on the IRMCT for cover, authorized standing, documentation, medical care, and any prospect of a significant future.

The IRMCT’s latest try and resolve their state of affairs by relocating them to Niger was a foreseeable catastrophe. Since December 2021, the surviving males have been confined to a home in Niamey, with out authorized standing or freedom of motion and wholly depending on the IRMCT to meet their requirements of life. Three of those males have died in these situations. Removed from an bureaucratic formality, the IRMCT is the establishment that wields decisive authority over whether or not these males will dwell the rest of their lives in security and dignity, or proceed to endure violations that worldwide regulation recognises as among the many most severe human rights abuses in existence.

This text contends that, in respect of the Stateless Eight, the United Nations, performing by the IRMCT as its subsidiary organ, has assumed human rights obligations below basic worldwide regulation. By successfully and decisively controlling their authorized standing, entry to fundamental requirements, and prospects for protected relocation, the United Nations bears, by the conduct of the IRMCT, binding obligations to respect, shield, and fulfil these males’s basic rights — obligations that are intensified by the dire circumstances by which these males now dwell. Till it secures the protected relocation and household reunification for every of the surviving Stateless Eight, any transfer to shutter the IRMCT isn’t solely untimely, however legally untenable and morally indefensible.

The Historical past of the IRMCT and the State of affairs of the “Stateless Eight”

Established in 2010 by Safety Council Decision 1966, the IRMCT assumed duty for the ICTR’s residual capabilities at a time when a number of of the boys who would later develop into the Stateless Eight had been already dwelling below UN safety in Arusha, as their return to Rwanda would have violated the precept of non-refoulement (see Irving).

But, for causes which stay unclear, their state of affairs was not addressed in the course of the IRMCT’s institution. The Secretary-Normal’s 2009 report centered on administrative and operational issues — together with the trial of fugitives, sentence enforcement, help to nationwide authorities, and archive administration — however made no provision for acquitted or launched people remaining in ICTR custody. The IRMCT’s Statute and Guidelines of Process and Proof mirror this obvious oversight.

When the IRMCT assumed duty for these people, the established order established by the ICTR was maintained. They remained in Arusha, even because the President of the IRMCT acknowledged that their extended limbo “gravely impacts their rights.”

On 15 November 2021, the IRMCT concluded a relocation settlement with Niger. The eight males consented to this relocation, on the assumption that this association would lastly enable them to rebuild their lives in freedom and dignity. The lads had been transferred to Niger in early December, however inside days the association collapsed: their identification playing cards had been withdrawn, armed police surrounded their residence, and expulsion orders had been issued. Though the Responsibility Decide twice ordered Niger to droop the expulsions and directed the Registrar to rearrange the boys’s speedy return to Arusha “forthwith”, the Registrar didn’t comply.

Since December 2021, the Stateless Eight have been subjected to illegal home arrest in Niamey. They proceed to dwell with out authorized standing, journey paperwork, or sufficient medical care. Three of the boys have died in these situations: Tharcisse Muvunyi (2023), Anatole Nsengiyumva (2024), and Protais Zigiranyirazo (2025). All through this era, the IRMCT has continued to report back to the Safety Council that it’s searching for “a sturdy answer” to the state of affairs confronted by the surviving males, whereas taking no significant steps to soundly relocate them or restore to them full UN safety.

The story of the Stateless Eight — from protracted limbo in Arusha to confinement and fixed insecurity in Niamey — makes clear that the IRMCT’s position is way over procedural or symbolic. By exercising decisive management over their authorized standing, entry to fundamental requirements, and prospects for relocation, the IRMCT has assumed human rights obligations which demand pressing and constructive motion.

The IRMCT’s Human Rights Obligations

The IRMCT is a subsidiary organ of the Safety Council and thus types a part of the institutional construction of the United Nations. Whereas subsidiary organs might not essentially possess unbiased worldwide authorized character distinct from the organisation that establishes them, their acts and omissions are attributable to that organisation below basic worldwide regulation (for an evaluation of attribution in respect of the advert hoc tribunals, see Sluiter at p. 624-628). Accordingly, the place the IRMCT workouts authority over people, any duty arising below worldwide regulation is borne by the United Nations.

As affirmed by the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice within the WHO-Egypt Advisory Opinion, worldwide organisations, just like the Safety Council and its subsidiaries, “are topics of worldwide regulation, and, as such, are sure by any obligations incumbent upon them below basic guidelines of worldwide regulation” — in different phrases, by customary worldwide regulation and basic ideas of regulation (see Clapham). Below basic worldwide regulation, the existence of jurisdiction over human rights follows the factual train of public energy over people by a topic of worldwide regulation (see Berkes). Whereas the check of “efficient authority or management” has been developed and critiqued extra totally in relation to the acts of UN peacekeeping operations (see Okada, Ryngaert), it displays a commonsense precept: the place an entity workouts energy over individuals in a fashion that’s decisive for the enjoyment of their rights, worldwide regulation attaches duty to that train of energy, notably the place no significant different protecting regime exists.

Additional, core human rights norms — most clearly, the rights to life, to be free from torture or degrading remedy, and to be free from arbitrary detention — are jus cogens norms and kind a part of customary worldwide regulation (see Schabas). The duty to respect, shield, and fulfil these rights bind worldwide organisations when and to the extent that they train jurisdiction over people.

The United Nations, performing by the IRMCT, workouts decisive and unique management over all vital elements of the lives of the Stateless Eight. It alone determines their authorized standing, authorises or withholds journey and identification documentation, controls entry to medical care and evacuation, manages their subsistence, and directs — or fails to direct — efforts towards their protected relocation. This management is determinative of the boys’s life, liberty, bodily and psychological integrity, entry to well being care, and proper to household life.

Such circumstances give rise to a “particular relationship of dependency” enough to set off jurisdiction below basic worldwide regulation and to have interaction the human rights obligations of a topic of worldwide regulation. The place a global organisation workouts unique and decisive authority over people and thereby controls whether or not and the way their basic rights could also be loved, jurisdiction and obligations comply with. To conclude in any other case can be to just accept the absurd proposition that a global organisation might wield complete energy over people whereas remaining legally unaccountable.

The IRMCT’s personal follow affirms this conclusion. The ICTR beforehand acknowledged that it bore duty for the welfare of acquitted individuals who remained below its authority, and that understanding has continued below the IRMCT. In Might 2022, the Appeals Chamber famous that:

“whereas the Mechanism’s obligation of care in direction of acquitted or launched individuals doesn’t proceed indefinitely following their relocation, within the specific circumstance of the current case, the place the relocation seems to not have been carried out in accordance with the complete phrases of the [Niger Agreement] … the obligation of care continues.”

This displays the IRMCT’s personal recognition that its management over the boys offers rise to obligation for his or her security and well-being below relevant norms of worldwide regulation.

Furthermore, the IRMCT’s human rights obligations towards the surviving males are intensified of their constructive and protecting dimensions by the absence of efficient safety from both the Stateless Eight’s state of nationality (Rwanda) or the host state (Niger).

Within the first occasion, if any of the surviving males had been returned to Rwanda, they’d face a grave and foreseeable dangers to their life and liberty. The Rwandan authorities has constantly demonstrated an intolerance for political opposition, notably towards people related to or perceived to be related to pre-1994 political establishments. The IRMCT’s choice to supply every of the Stateless Eight with UN safety in Arusha following their acquittals or launch clearly illustrates that their state of nationality can’t moderately be anticipated to afford them efficient safety of their basic rights.

Within the second occasion, the 2023 coup d’état in Niger and the following withdrawal of worldwide help has considerably eroded that nation’s capability to supply fundamental human rights protections. The place the authority of a state is disrupted and basic rights can’t be secured by peculiar mechanisms, the entity exercising efficient management over the people involved — right here, the UN, by the conduct of the IRMCT — bears a good larger obligation to be proactive in order that the human rights of these totally depending on it are upheld.

Taken collectively, the IRMCT’s decisive management over the lives of the Stateless Eight, coupled with the absence of efficient safety from both their state of nationality or the host state, establishes its jurisdiction as a human rights duty-bearer. Worldwide regulation requires it take energetic measures to make sure that the boys’s basic rights are revered, protected, and fulfilled.

Conclusion

In accordance with its human rights obligations, the IRMCT should assure that the surviving Stateless Eight are relocated safely to a 3rd nation and reunited with their households. That is the minimal required to finish the extended violations to their rights and restore their skill to dwell with dignity. Have been the IRMCT lastly safe such an end result in cooperation with states, the winding up of the tribunal would increase no principled objection.

What can’t be justified is the dissolution of the IRMCT whereas the surviving males stay trapped in authorized and humanitarian limbo, wholly depending on an establishment that alone controls the technique of resolving their state of affairs. In these circumstances, repeated invocations of “complementarity” by Safety Council delegates are divorced from actuality. Complementarity presupposes the existence of keen and succesful states. In respect of the Stateless Eight, none have proactively assumed duty for the boys’s safety, relocation, or fundamental safety.

Shuttering the IRMCT below these circumstances wouldn’t mark the orderly completion of its mandate. It might quantity to a collective abdication of duty, entrench ongoing human rights violations, and ship a deeply troubling message: that worldwide justice mechanisms can wield complete energy over people, create absolute dependency, after which stroll away with out securing a lawful and lasting answer. Worldwide regulation forbids such an end result, and the credibility of worldwide prison justice depends upon making certain it by no means occurs.