Drawing a Line between the Responsibility of an International Organization and its Member States under International Law
Abstract
This contribution aims to prove how important it is, from both theoretical and practical points of view, to draw a line between the responsibility of international organizations and that of their Member States under international law. The international reality brings many complex situations of interrelations between States and international organizations.
Sometimes, but not always, they are bound by the same international obligations. Th e responsibility for international wrongful acts is a key institution irrespective of whether the act was committed by a State or an international organization.
In most cases, the distribution of competences and rules on attribution makes it possible to attribute the responsibility either to an organization or to its member State. However, there are also many areas of shared or unclear competences where a kind of shared responsibility is very necessary.
The ILC Draft Articles provide for several rules concerning the responsibility of an international organization in connection with an act of its Member State or vice versa. Th e potentially most important and yet controversial articles are the two articles dealing with the circumvention of an international obligation by an international organization or by a State when the organization or the State incurs international responsibility.
As there are still many "responsibility gaps" caused at the level of primary rules, it is important to limit the number of situations where neither an international organization nor a State incurs responsibility.