Abstract | The article explores the relationship between two different sets of rules on State responsibility: on the one hand, those that were codified in the 2001 Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts by the International Law Commission, and on the other, those that are embodied in some international humanitarian law conventions, such as the 1907 IV Hague Convention, the four 1949 Geneva Conventions, and the 1977 I Additional Protocol. As demonstrated by a survey of these treaties, some rules on State responsibility in relation to jus in bello existed before any codification by the International Law Commission. This article explores whether these two sets of rules regulate State responsibility in the same way, whether there are differences between them, and which approach the ILC adopted with regard to the rules on State responsibility embodied in international humanitarian law conventions. In particular, the article addresses issues concerning many aspects of the law on State responsibility, such as attribution, the consequences of wrongful acts, and circumstances precluding the wrongfulness. This article demonstrates that, with regard to certain rules, the ILC tried to take into account some of the provisions on State responsibility that are embodied in international humanitarian law conventions, and to emphasise some of the peculiarities of the jus in bello. However, with regard to some other rules, the International Law Commission has not considered fully the specificities of international humanitarian law, creating uncertainness on the correspondence of the two sets of rules and on the applicability of the Draft Articles to international humanitarian law violations. This article addresses these contentious issue in order to clarify when international humanitarian law provisions on State responsibility should be applied instead of the Draft Articles pursuant to the principle of lex specialis. |
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