The Normative Environment for Peace – On the Contribution of the ILC’s Articles on State Responsibility

Abstract

The relationship between State responsibility and peace is necessarily a complex one, if only for the vast characteristics of both the law of State responsibility and modern concepts of peace. The topic would have been easier to deal with in a time when “State responsibility” addressed almost exclusively reparation for injuries to aliens1 and “peace” was understood as embodying only the mere absence of armed conflict.2 At this point in time, the law of State responsibility was not a likely candidate to be mentioned among the instruments international law would provide for the promotion of peace. Instead, State responsibility was a concept with which a certain, well–defined international economic order was to be safeguarded3; an effort which met with protest especially by Latin American States.4 Philip C. Jessup characterized it as a part of the history of imperialism or dollar diplomacy5, thus describing it as an instrument of power politics.