THE UNITED NATIONS COMPENSATION COMMISSION AND THE BALANCING OF RIGHTS BETWEEN INDIVIDUAL CLAIMANTS AND THE GOVERNMENT OF IRAQ

• Published in: UCLA journal of international law and foreign affairs Vol. 10; no. 1; pp. 141 - 178
• Main Author: Chung, John J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Regents of the University of California and the graduate students of UCLA 01-07-2005; 01-04-2005
• ISSN: 1089-2605; 2169-7833

The UN Compensation Commission (the Commission) in Geneva resolved over 2.68 million claims filed by governments, corporations, and individuals seeking more than $350 billion in compensation for losses suffered during Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1990-91. This article focuses on one aspect of the Commission's work that has drawn little attention in the body of commentary describing the work of the Commission: the challenges involved in establishing a fair process and framework for resolving more than 2.67 million claims filed by the individual victims of war. The Commission struggled to achieve a fine balance between the protection of the rights of individual claimants and the rights of the Government of Iraq. The difficulty of this task was compounded by the fact that neither the claimants nor the Government of Iraq was in a position to submit a sufficient factual record to support its respective position. This article examines the challenges faced by the individual claimants, the Government of Iraq, and the Commission in addressing these difficulties and describes the framework the Commission ultimately employed. This article concludes that two inter-related procedural features served to safeguard the rights of the claimants and the Government of Iraq: (1) the use of an inquisitorial process instead of an adversarial process to decide claims, and (2) the use of disinterested third-party fact-finding reports to supply the factual record. This article further concludes that any future commission that addresses the losses of individual victims of war or war-like hostilities will need to adopt these same features.