6 Responsibility, 6.9 Nuhanović v Netherlands, Judgment, BZ9225, and Mustafić v Netherlands, Judgment, BZ9228, Supreme Court of The Netherlands, 6 September 2013

Subject(s):

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

The Nuhanović and Mustafić cases deal with the legal responsibility of the Netherlands for acts committed by a battalion of Dutch soldiers, placed at the disposal of the United Nations (UN) to take part in a peacekeeping mission. In its judgment, the Dutch Supreme Court made extensive use of the Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ARS), and the Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations (DARIO) of the International Law Commission (ILC). While the question of attribution is decided on the basis of international law, the wrongfulness of the conduct of the Dutch peacekeepers is assessed mainly on the basis of local domestic (Bosnia-Herzegovina) private law. Nonetheless, as an obiter dictum, the Supreme Court also had something interesting to say about the extraterritorial application of international human rights law in a case such as this one.