A/HRC/33/48 27. The Special Rapporteur deplores the fact that, the Human Rights Council has not been authorized to request advisory opinions from the International Court of Justice although its status as a subsidiary organ of the General Assembly22 would have warranted it. Such authorization has been given to a number of United Nations specialized agencies and main organs of the United Nations, including the Economic and Social Council.23 2. Inter-State arbitration 28. In addition to the International Court of Justice, a number of bilateral and multilateral treaties provide for the compulsory jurisdiction of an international arbitral tribunal in cases of dispute between the parties to the instruments with regard to the interpretation or application thereof. Such dispute settlement clauses could, in certain situations, be used to bring inter-State claims based on unilateral coercive measures that may violate some provisions of the treaty considered.24 3. World Trade Organization dispute settlement mechanism 29. To the extent that unilateral coercive measures imposed by a World Trade Organization (WTO) member State against another member State may arguably entail violations of the obligations set forth in the WTO agreements, the question arises as to whether recourse to the WTO Dispute Settlement Body is an option for a WTO member State faced with international sanctions.25 30. The State(s) affected should of course demonstrate that the measures considered contradict various provisions of the WTO agreements. It may be reasonable to think that some of the grounds for considering unilateral coercive measures unlawful under public international law would also be considered by the WTO dispute panel. Article 3.2 of the WTO Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes provides that the dispute settlement system of the WTO serves to preserve the rights and obligations of members under the covered agreements and to clarify the existing provisions of those agreements in accordance with customary rules of interpretation of public international law. In 1996, WTO Appellate Body, in US–Gasoline stated that “the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is not to be read in clinical isolation from public international law”.26 Regarding the possible invocation of security exceptions (such as that 22 23 24 25 26 8 opinions on the legal consequences of the construction of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian territory and on the accordance with international law of the unilateral declaration of independence in respect of Kosovo. See Jochen Frowein and Karin Oellers-Frahm, “Article 65”, in The Statute of the International Court of Justice: A commentary, Andreas Zimmermann and others, eds. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 1614. See General Assembly resolution 60/251. See General Assembly resolution 89 (I). See for example, the Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of the Sudan concerning the Encouragement of Investments, 7 February 1963, art. 11, available at http://investmentpolicyhub.unctad.org/Download/TreatyFile/1420. The Russian Federation, WTO member since 2012, has referred to the option of bringing proceedings before the WTO Dispute Settlement Body to challenge European Union and United States sanctions against it. Russian Minister of Economic Development, Aleksey Ulyukaev, stated that the latest round of sanctions provided grounds to appeal to the WTO, and that they would appeal them: see Russia Today, “Russia to appeal against US, EU sanctions to WTO” (12 September 2014) available at http://rt.com/business/187432-wto-russia-sanctions-ulyukaev/; also E. Pickett and M. Lux, “Embargo as a trade defence against an embargo: the WTO compatibility of the Russian ban on imports from the EU”, Global Trade and Customs Journal, vol. 10, No. 1 (2015), pp. 2-41. World Trade Organization, United States – Standards for Reformulated and Conventional Gasoline, Report of the Appellate Body, 29 April 1996 (WT/DS2/AB/R), p. 17.