To ensure the effective and independent exercise of its functions, the United Nations is endowed with ‘immunity from every form of legal process’, as Section 2 General Convention phrases it. The Supreme Court of the Netherlands perceived this immunity as absolute, clearing away assertions that the UN’s immunity should not be impervious to alleged ius cogens violations and for the failure to subsequently provide alternative dispute settlement. However, a critical examination of both of these arguments reveals that the UN’s immunity in relation to its legal accountability is a proverbial Gordian knot: seemingly impossible to smoothly disentangle so that the UN’s functional capacities in the realm of international peace and security are effectively protected whilst the need for greater accountability is satisfied.