Conclusions

Summary

States routinely refer to the resolutions of the General Assembly in their domestic and international practice. One reason for such extensive reliance on resolutions is that the General Assembly has a broad mandate, which allows it to adopt resolutions on a wide range of issues spanning across areas as different as human rights protection and economic cooperation. Another reason is that, as decisions of the representative organ of the United Nations, resolutions are endowed with a certain degree of persuasive authority. Therefore, they seem naturally suited to make an impact on state conduct. At the same time, it appears that states rely more heavily on certain resolutions rather than others. In order to shed light on the normative implications of this observed practice, the analysis in the present study addressed three main issues: the concept of autonomy of the General Assembly from its member states, instances of attribution of different degrees of legal significance to resolutions by states in different contexts and the legal implications of such practices for the development of international law.