State Responsibility: Reflections On The ILC’s Draft Articles

Abstract

The author's to state responsibility goes back to the academic year 1959- 1960, when Harvard law school was engaged in the Project of State Responsibility for Injury to Aliens under Professors Richard Baxter and Louis B. Sohn. The preponderance of doctrine and state practice at that time was that an espoused claim was indeed that of the state concerned, which, in turn, was entitled to waive, compromise or settle it in its dealings with other states. Two brief observations will help bring the matter into perspective. One is that the declaration in Security Council Resolution 687 regarding Iraq's liability is consistent with established customary international law holding states responsible for damages caused by their unlawful actions. The second observation is that one can envisage several other situations in which unlawful acts generally, and unlawful invasion and occupation in particular, have occurred without the victim states receiving any remedy.Keywords: customary international law; state responsibility