State Responsibility

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Shooting fishermen mistaken for pirates: jurisdiction, immunity and State responsibility

March 2, 2012

Francesco Messineo referred below to the incident in which Italian marines, embarked aboard an oil tanker to protect it, appear to have killed two Indian fishermen mistaking them for pirates. There has been a lively debate about how best to manage armed security for vessels transiting the high-risk piracy area off Somalia. The two options usually advocated are: embarking military forces to act as a Vessel Protection Detachment (VPD); and private armed security guards (PASGs). The usual issues for discussion are questions of jurisdiction, immunity and state responsibility. What follows is a preliminary sketch of the issues as I see them. Vessel Protection Detachments In any such fatal shooting episode the first question is which State has jurisdiction: Italy or India? The answer is, of course, both States do. As Francesco pointed out, if this episode occurred on the high seas (as it appears to have done), it is governed by the Lotus Case. In Lotus the PCIJ found, unremarkably and by analogy with…

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Iran, The Nuclear Issue & Countermeasures

January 10, 2012

Sahib Singh is a Visiting Lecturer of International Law at the University of Vienna, a Visiting Fellow at the British Institute of International & Comparative Law and a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. The legal principles and arguments put forward are addressed far more extensively, albeit in the context of a…

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The Hague Court of Appeal on Dutchbat at Srebrenica Part 2: Attribution, Effective Control, and the Power to Prevent

November 10, 2011

 Tom Dannenbaum is a Graduate Associate in the Law and Public Affairs Program at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is author of Translating the Standard of Effective Control into a System of Effective Accountability: How Liability Should be Apportioned for Violations of Human Rights by Member State Troop…

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The Hague Court of Appeal on Dutchbat at Srebrenica Part 1: A Narrow Finding on the Responsibilities of Peacekeepers

October 25, 2011

Tom Dannenbaum is a Graduate Associate in the Law and Public Affairs Program at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He is author of Translating the Standard of Effective Control into a System of Effective Accountability: How Liability Should be Apportioned for Violations of Human Rights by Member State Troop…

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“Rescuing ‘Boat People’ in the Mediterranean Sea: The Responsibility of States under the Law of the Sea”.

May 31, 2011

Dr. Efthymios Papastavridis, LLM(Athens), LLM(UCL), PhD (UCL) is Adjunct Lecturer, University of Thrace, Faculty of Law and Research Fellow, Academy of Athens, Greece [papastavridis@Academyofathens.gr]. 1. Introductory Remarks According to a very recent article by The Guardian, ‘a boat carrying 72 passengers, including several…

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