Part V The Implementation of International Responsibility, Ch.84 Obligations Relating to Human Rights and Humanitarian Law
Silvia Borelli, Simon Olleson
From: The Law of International Responsibility
Edited By: James Crawford, Alain Pellet, Simon Olleson, Kate Parlett
- Subject(s):
- Responsibility of states — Wrongful acts — Countermeasures — Reprisals — Geneva Conventions 1949 — Belligerents — Erga omnes obligations — State practice
In 1928, the tribunal in the ‘ Naulilaa ’ arbitration held that the range of actions open to a State in response to a breach by another State of its international obligations was ‘limited by the requirements of humanity’. 1 A few years later, the Institut de droit international adopted a resolution declaring that in the adoption of measures of reprisal, a State must ‘abstain from any harsh measure which would be contrary to the laws of humanity and the dictates of the public conscience’. 2 Since these early pronouncements, the idea that the performance of certain...