Note on sources and style

This volume contains a consolidated reproduction of Part One (articles 1 to 35) of the Draft Article on State Responsibility and their important Commentaries, prepared by the International Law Commission in the period ending in 1980. These articles deal with the origin of international responsibility, including general principles, the act of State, breach of an international obligation, and circumstances precluding wrongfulness. They were drawn up on the basis of eight reports submitted by the Special Rapporteur, Professor, now Judge Roberto Ago. An introduction written by Shabtai Rosenne traces the history of the official codification of the topic of State Responsibility since the League of Nations first broached the matter in 1924. State Responsibility is central to the daily practice of international law, and its systematic treatment is central to the codification process. The International Law Commission is continuing work on the topic. In the meantime, the articles of Part One, now concentrated for the first time in a single volume, are the major starting point for this work. This volume will be of great value to practitioners, teachers and students of international law. Shabtai Rosenne was a member of the International Law Commission from 1962 to 1971, when the basic decisions regarding the approach to the current phase of the work were taken.

The last decade has witnessed an increasing focus on the relationship between climate change and human rights. Several international human rights bodies have expressed concern about the negative implications of climate change for the enjoyment of human rights, and the Paris Agreement is the first multilateral climate agreement to refer explicitly to states' human rights obligations in connection with climate change. Yet despite this, there are still significant gaps in our understanding of the role of international human rights law in enhancing accountability for climate action or inaction. As the Paris Agreement has shifted the focus of the climate change regime towards voluntary action, and the humanitarian impacts of climate change are increasingly being felt around the world, accountability for climate change has become an increasingly salient issue. This book offers a timely and comprehensive analysis of the legal issues related to accountability for the human rights impact of climate change, drawing on the state responsibility regime. It explains when and where state action relating to climate change may amount to a violation of human rights, and evaluates various avenues of legal redress available to victims. The overall analysis offers a perceptive insight into the potential of innovative rights-based climate actions to shape climate and energy policies around the world.

This book will consider a rapidly emerging guiding general principle in international relations and, arguably, in international law: the Responsibility to Protect. This principle is a solution proposed to a key preoccupation in both international relations and international law scholarship: how the international community is to respond to mass atrocities within sovereign States. There are three facets to this responsibility; the responsibility to prevent; the responsibility to react, and the responsibility to rebuild. This doctrine will be analysed in light of the parallel development of customary and treaty international legal obligations imposing responsibilities on sovereign states to the international community in key international law fields such as international human rights law, international criminal law and international environmental law. These new developments demand academic study and this book fills this lacuna by rigorously considering all of these developments as part of a trend towards assumption of international responsibility. This must include the responsibility on the part of all states to respond to threats of genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansings and large-scale war crimes. The discussion surrounding aggravated state responsibility is also explored, with the author concluding that this emerging norm within international law is closely related to the responsibility to protect in its imposition of an international responsibility to act in response to an international wrong. This book will be of great interest to scholars on international law, the law of armed conflict, security studies and IR in general.

Although human trafficking has a long and ignoble history, it is only recently that trafficking has become a major political issue for states and the international community and the subject of detailed international rules. Anne T. Gallagher calls on her direct experience working within the United Nations to chart the development of new international laws on this issue. She links these rules to the international law of state responsibility as well as key norms of international human rights law, transnational criminal law, refugee law and international criminal law, in the process identifying and explaining the major legal obligations of states with respect to preventing trafficking, protecting and supporting victims, and prosecuting perpetrators. This book is a groundbreaking work: a unique and valuable resource for policymakers, advocates, practitioners and scholars working in this controversial and important field.

Clearly and accessibly written, this new text provides a valuable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of international law and covers subjects including the history, theories and sources of international law, as well as current areas of interest such as international criminal law.

The definitive and authoritative international law text, updated to reflect key case law, international practice and treaty developments.

The accountability of armed non-state actors is a neglected field of international law, overtaken by the regimes of state responsibility and individual criminal accountability as well as fears of legitimacy. Yet armed non-state actors are important players in the international arena and their activities have significant repercussions. This book focuses on their obligations and accountability when they do not function as state agents, regardless of the existence or extent of accountability of their individual members. The author claims that their distinct features lead to their classification into three different types: de facto entities, armed non-state actors in control of territory, and common article 3 armed non-state actors. The mechanisms that trigger the applicability of humanitarian and human rights law regimes are examined in detail as well as the framework of obligations. In both cases, the author argues that armed non-state actors should not be treated as entering international law and process exclusively through the state. The study concludes by focussing on their accountability in international humanitarian and human rights law and, more specifically, to the rules of attribution, remedies and reparations for violations of their primary obligations.

The drive for harmonisation of environmental criminal standards at both the international and European level emerges from the increasing recognition of the scale and seriousness of environmental crime, the need to strengthen mechanisms of police and judicial interstate cooperation to combat cross-border crime, and the objective to ensure fair competition in a global economy and an integrated EU common market. The harmonisation of environmental criminal law requires a competent institutional framework able to convey the need for criminalisation of environmental harm while not overriding national aspirations to sovereignty in criminal matters. The book Environmental Criminal Liability and Enforcement in European and International Law assesses legal, theoretical and practical questions of harmonisation of national environmental criminal law and the mechanisms for cooperation by sovereign states under European and International Law, with a particular emphasis on legislative developments in the European Union, the Council of Europe and other international institutions, assessing the case for an extension of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court over international environmental crimes.

Partnerships between the public and private sectors are an increasingly accepted method to deal with pressing global issues, such as those relating to health. Partnerships, comprised of states and international organizations (public sector) and companies, non-governmental organizations, research institutes and philanthropic foundations (private sector), are forming to respond to pressing global health issues. These partnerships are managing activities that are normally regarded to be within the domain of states and international organizations, such as providing access to preventative and treatment measures for certain diseases, or improving health infrastructure within certain states to better manage the growing risk of disease. In the shadow of the success of these partnerships lies, however, the possibility of something going wrong and it is to this shadow that this book sheds light. This book explores the issue of responsibility under international law in the context of global health public-private partnerships. The legal status of partnerships under international law is explored in order to determine whether or not partnerships have legal personality under international law, resulting in them being subject to rules of responsibility under international law. The possibility of holding partnerships responsible in domestic legal systems and the immunity partnerships have from the jurisdiction of domestic courts in certain states is also considered. The obstacles to holding partnerships themselves responsible leads finally to an investigation into the possibility of holding states and/or international organizations, as partners and/or hosts of partnerships, responsible under international law in relation to the acts of partnerships. This book will be of interest to those researching and working in areas of global governance, especially hybrid public-private bodies; the responsibility under international law of states and international organizations; and also global health. It provides doctrinal clarification and practical guidance in a developing field of international law.