Chapter

International responsibility of armed opposition groups : lessons from state responsibility for actions of armed opposition groups

Sten I. Verhoeven

Responsibilities of the non-state actor in armed conflict and the market place : theoretical considerations and empirical findings

Leiden ; Boston : Brill Nijhoff, 2015

p. 285-303

English

Under current international law, a gap exists with regard to armed opposition group (AOG) responsibility: the State on the territory of which such groups are operational is not always responsible for the latter's acts, nor does international law provide specific rules concerning their direct responsibility. After arguing that direct AOG responsibility may be deduced from Article 10 of the International Law Commission Articles on State Responsibility (which attributes to the State acts of insurrectional movements which subsequently seize governmental power or create a new State), the author turns to examine how the adoption of rules regarding attribution of conduct could be conceived so that an AOG responsibility regime is workable in practice. Proposing to design attribution rules by analogy to the law on State responsibility, acts of individuals would be attributable to the AOG when they are organs of the AOG, or when acting under the effective control of, or directed by, the AOG. However, before conclusively determining questions of attribution of conduct, the author notes that the need for more in-depth studies on the organisational structure and decision-making processes of insurrectional movements.

• Responsibilities of the non-state actor in armed conflict and the market place : theoretical considerations and empirical findings / ed. by Noemi Gal-Or, Cedric Ryngaert and Math Noortmann