CYIL 2011

PAVEL ŠTURMA CYIL 2 ȍ2011Ȏ is internationally wrongful for the member State to which the decision, authorization or recommendation is directed (Art. 16, para. 3). In cases where the international organization adopted merely an authorization or recommendation, it would incur responsibility only if the State commits the act in question because of that authorization or recommendation (Art.16, para. 2). Put differently, if the State relied on that authorization or recommendation. However, there are some problematic aspects in draft Article 16 [17]. First of all, it concerns the notion of circumvention of an international obligation. To circumvent means to “get round” or to “bypass” and thereby escape a violation of an obligation. Some commentators asked the question of what the notion of circumvention means. In other words, whether circumvention is a second, additional requirement? 17 T he Commentary of the ILC only indicates that “a specific intention of circumvention is not required”. 18 Some States have criticized the notion of circumvention for a lack of clarity, 19 while others supported the reading which interprets it as an intentional misuse of an organization’s powers in order to evade responsibility. 20 Therefore, the Special Rapporteur, in its Eighth report, made it clear that the wording including circumvention was more an explanation than an addition of a condition. 21 Consequently, he proposed a reformulation of the draft article. Another problem concerns the line between binding and non-binding acts adopted by an international organization. While the first paragraph dealing with binding decisions seems to be widely acceptable, certain States and international organizations were critical of paragraph 2 whereby an international organization incurs responsibility because of a recommendation. E.g., the European Commission expressed the view that “to hold that an international organization incurs responsibility on the basis of mere ‘recommendations’ made to a State or an international organization appears to go too far”. 22 It was also pointed out that in the case of a recommendation, “there needs to be an intervening act – the decision of the State or another international organization to commit that act. The chain of causation would be thus broken”. 23 The proposal of making international organizations responsible for a non-binding recommendation was also criticized in literature. As to the other distinction between the two types of non-binding decisions, i.e. authorizations and recommendations, it seems to be correct. On the one hand, an authorization will normally take away the wrongfulness of an otherwise unlawful conduct (e.g. the authorization by the Security Council to authorize Member States to take all necessary measures, which include the use of

17 Cf. Blokker, N., op. cit., pp. 42-43. 18 Report of the ILC, 2009, op. cit., p. 89. 19 A/C.6/64/SR.16, para. 24 (the United Kingdom).

20 A/CN.4/636, sect. II.B.14 (Germany). 21 A/CN.4/640 (2011), p. 19, para. 55. 22 A/CN.4/637, sect. II.B.12. 23 A/CN.4/637, sect. II.B.12 (ILO).

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