Chapter

About responsibility

Wolfgang Schomburg

The protection of non-combatants during armed conflict and safeguarding the rights of victims in post-conflict society : essays in honour of the life and work of Joakim Dungel

Leiden ; Boston : Brill Nijhoff, [2015]

p. 34-52

English

This chapter is the text of Wolfgang Schomburg's commentary "On responsibility", which was presented during the 2013 Joakim Dungel Lectures in International Justice, in which Schomburg addresses several aspects of criminal responsibility in national and international law. He posits that, in national criminal law, individual criminal responsibility may be attached to a failure to act if there is a duty under the law to act such that omission is equated to committing a crime. The international law concept of the responsibility to protect seeks to address the international community's efforts to adequately prevent and punish genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The notion of transitional justice describes the idea of addressing, conceptualising, and clarifying the necessary steps to regain peace and to work on reconciliation. The chapter concludes by addressing the concept of command responsibility in international criminal law, in particular in light of the Oric case before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yougoslavia.

• The protection of non-combatants during armed conflict and safeguarding the rights of victims in post-conflict society : essays in honour of the life and work of Joakim Dungel / ed. by Philipp Ambach... [et al.]