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...
