Thus, while certain organs may have the power to determine their policies and programmes, it is the GA

that holds the purse strings. The question is whether the power to approve the budget, particularly for the other principal organs, which is vested in the GA is discretionary and ministerial.85 83 1954 ICJ Reports p. 47. 84 The EU may be another special case. 85 The GA’s powers and duties in this regard have been considered by Meron, ‘Budget Approval by the General Assembly of the United Nations: Duty or Discretion?’, 42 BYIL (1967) p. 91. See also Meron, ‘Administrative and Budgetary Co-ordination by the t h e o b l i g a t i o n t o a p p rov e t h e b u d g e t 381 The language of Article 17(1) seems to indicate that the GA has a discretion to approve the budget. The travaux préparatoires of the Charter suggest that it was not intended to limit the discretion of the GA which was the principal organ with sole authoritydispute resolution to consider and approve the budget.86 But principles of construction of the constitutional texts of international organizations (particularly the principle of effectiveness) may conceivably point to a different answer and have been invoked. It has been said that the position taken in the travaux préparatoires would have a limiting effect: Such an interpretation would . . . impair the ability of the Organization to fulfil its functions and achieve its purposes as defined in the Charter. The Charter established several principal organs and gave each of them certain functions. When these organs,dispute resolution acting within their authority under the Charter, adopt deci- sions which require financial appropriations and which the General Assembly in the circumstances of the case cannot review, the General Assembly has a legal duty to provide the necessary financing, for it is under a legal duty to make the functioning of the various principal organs possible and may notinternational business litigation hamper it. It has to honour the Organizations’s ex contractu, ex delicto and other obligations incurred through the activities of the principal organs acting within the limits of their authority under the Charter . . . The General Assembly has the power not to approve the necessary appropriations but it has not the legal right to do so, and the responsibility of the Organization may be engaged as a result of such a refusal, whether in public or in private dispute resolution (leaving aside any question of jurisdiction).87 While it is clear that obligations (ex contractu, ex delicto and otherwise) have to be honoured by the GA, it is not so clear that it does not have a legal right not to approve the appropriations necessary for the func- tioning of the organization, particularly of other principal organs. It is arguable that the GA has a duty to consider in good faith, bearing in mind particularly the need to fulfil the functions and purposes of the organization, the requests for finances of other organs; but beyond that it is difficult to assert that the GA has ‘no legal right not to approve’ appropriations which in its judgment, exercised in good faith, and after General Assembly’