6 Responsibility, 6.8 Mukeshimana-Nguilinzira and ors. v Belgium and ors., Brussels Court of First Instance, ILDC 1604 (BE 2010), 8 December 2010

Subject(s):

Membership of international organizations — International organizations, practice and procedure — Responsibility of international organizations — Attribution

In Mukeshimana, the Brussels Court of First Instance held that a decision to evacuate a compound in Rwanda, occupied by the Belgian military in the framework of an UN peace operation, was attributable to Belgium, and could engage Belgium’s responsibility. After the evacuation, Interahamwe militia killed most persons who had sought refuge on the compound. The Court fails to provide proper conceptual arguments for such attribution, limiting itself to stating that the case should be distinguished from the Behrami decision of the European Court of Human Rights. Arguably, Mukeshimana should have been based on the effective control standard as laid down in art. 7 of the Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations for Internationally Wrongful Acts, and as applied by Dutch courts in the Srebrenica litigation against the Dutch State.