Published in in International Organizations Law Review, 2015, pp. 468-483 (DOI 10.1163/15723747-01202010) Litigating Member State Responsibility: the Monetary Gold Principle and the Protection of Absent Organizations Paolo Palchetti* Abstract It is not rare that, in a dispute brought before an international tribunal against a member state of an organization, that state, by relying on the Monetary Gold principle, asks the tribunal to refrain from exercising its jurisdiction, arguing that this would lead to determining the responsibility of the organization. Such an objection raises the question of whether the Monetary Gold principle, which so far has been applied in cases when the absent third party was a state, also applies to absent organizations. The present article intends to study the question of the applicability of the Monetary Gold principle in relation to situations in which member states can be held responsible for the conduct of the organization. While in principle there are situations in which the determination of the responsibility of the organization appears to be a precondition to the determination of the responsibility of the member state, the fact that an international tribunal does not have jurisdiction over international organizations should lead one to exclude that the Monetary Gold principle applies at all to situations in which the absent third party is an international organization. Keywords International courts and tribunals – International organizations – Responsibility for internationally wrongful acts – Monetary Gold principle – Capacity to be a party to a case. I. Introduction When a dispute is brought before an international tribunal against a member state of an organization and the dispute concerns the responsibility of that state for conduct taken within the framework of, or in connection with acts of, that organization, two main objections are generally raised by the defendant state in order to prevent the tribunal from ruling upon the dispute. The first objection