State Responsibility: A Concerto For Court, Council And Committee

摘要

The judgment in the Case Concerning the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention case), released by the International Court of Justice (the Court) on 26th February 2007, has thrown up a number of interesting issues to keep scholars of international law entertained for some years. Amongst these are the rules of state responsibility in international law. In the Genocide Convention Case, the Court relied upon the narrow regime of state responsibility that they had introduced in Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua (Nicaragua) over 20 years previously, rejecting a stronger doctrine suggested by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Tadic case. The Court's conservative interpretation of state responsibility does not immediately appear to be in harmony with the regimes of state responsibility envisaged by other United Nations institutions, notably, state responsibility for terrorist activities as understood by the Security Council (the Council), and the tertiary scheme of state responsibility for violations of human rights adopted and applied by the United Nations human rights treaty bodies (treaty bodies).