16. The Duty of Care as a Corollary of International Organizations’ Human Rights Obligations

de Guttry 2012, p. 276.

Mégret and Hoffmann 2003, p. 320.

Ibid.

Cogan 2011, p. 323, quoting Higgins 1994, p. 105.

Pronto 2007, p. 754; see for an argument a contrario, Pellet 2000.

Tzevelekos 2013, p. 62. See also Pisillo-Mazzeschi 2008, pp. 199 ff.

Meron 2006, Introduction.

Klabbers 2015, p. 16.

Faix 2014, p. 273.

Faix 2014, p. 274.

As underlined by Mégret and Hoffmann 2003, pp. 316 ff., this is patently evident in the case of the UN international transitional civil administration in East Timor or in Kosovo.

Le Floch 2015, p. 381, referring to the side effects over the population of UN sanctions against Iraq in the ‘90s.

Le Floch 2015, p. 383.

ICJ, Interpretation of the Agreement of 25 March 1951 Between the WHO and Egypt, Advisory Opinion, 20 December 1980, I.C.J. Rep. 1980, p. 90, para 37: ‘International organizations are subjects of international law and, as such, are bound by any obligations incumbent upon them under general rules of international law, under their constitutions or under international agreements to which they are parties’. The same principle was implied in the Court’s argument in the Reparation for injury case, where it stated that, being a subject of international law, any international organization is ‘capable of possessing international rights and duties’: ICJ, Reparation for Injuries Suffered in the Service of the United Nations, Advisory Opinion, 11 April 1949, I.C.J. Rep. 1949, p. 179.

Verdirame 2011, p. 73.

On the qualification of Interpol as an International Governmental Organization, see Runavot 2015, pp. 26 ff.

Verdirame 2011, p. 81.

Verdirame 2011, p. 75.

ICJ, Effect of awards of compensation made by the UN Administrative Tribunal, Advisory Opinion, 13 July 1954, I.C.J. Rep. 1954, p. 47.

Verdirame 2011, p. 71.

Le Floch 2015, p. 389.

Ibid, quoting Forteau 2009.

Naert 2010, p. 134.

Naert 2010, p. 134.

Le Floch 2015, p. 390, quoting Pescatore 2000.

Klein 1998, pp. 331 ff., mainly referring to the case law of the European Court of Justice.

Naert 2010, p. 132; Le Floch 2015, p. 390.

Naert 2010, p. 132.

Faix 2014, p. 283.

Article 61 of the Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations makes it clear, stating that any State member of an international organization incurs international responsibility if, by taking advantage of the fact that the organization has competence in relation to the subject-matter of one of the State’s international obligations, it circumvents that obligation by causing the organization to commit an act that, if committed by the State, would have constituted a breach of the obligation (Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations, with commentaries 2011, adopted by the International Law Commission at its sixty-third session, in 2011, and submitted to the General Assembly as a part of the Commission’s report covering the work of that session (A/66/10)). This rule, as the commentary well explains, derives from the case law of the ECtHR on equivalent protection (De Schutter 2010, pp. 78–86). See Spagnolo, Chap. 3.

De Schutter 2010, p. 110.

See, for a different opinion: Poretto and Vitè 2006, pp. 43–44.

With the Opinion no. 2/13, delivered on 18 December 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union excluded the compatibility with EU law of the draft agreement on the accession of the European Union to the European Convention on Human Rights. While noticing that the lack of a legal basis for the EU’s accession—previously stressed in the Opinion no. 2/94 of 28 March 1996—has been resolved by the Treaty of Lisbon, the Court insisted on the special features of the EU referring, in particular to the autonomy of the EU legal order.

ICJ, North Sea Continental Shell (Federal Republic of Germany v. Netherlands and Federal Republic of Germany v. Denmark), Judgement 20 February 1969, I.C.J. Rep. 1969, p. 44, para 77.

Verdirame 2011, p. 56.

ICJ, Interpretation of the Agreement of 25 March 1951 Between the WHO and Egypt, pp. 89–90.

Verdirame 2011, p. 71.

Ibid.

De Schutter 2010, p. 68. Amerasinghe, as well, considers that the respect of human rights is founded on general principles (Amerasinghe 2010, pp. 528–529).

O’Boyle and Lafferty 2013, p. 195.

Le Floch 2015, p. 392.

Ibid.

De Schutter 2010, p. 104, referring, on the one hand, to the operational policies integrating human rights issues developed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, along with mechanisms for monitoring compliance and, on the other, to UNIMIK accession to monitoring mechanisms established within the Council of Europe.

Verdirame 2011, p. 84, mentioning some standard-setting resolutions of the General Assembly, including UNGA Resolution 45/111 (1990) Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners; UNGA Resolution 45/113 (1990) UN Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty; UNGA Resolution 45/110 (1991) UN Standard Minimum Rules for non-Custodial Measures; UNGA Resolution 40/33 (1985) UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice.

ICJ, Temple of Preah Vihear (Cambodia v. Thailand), 26 May 1961, I.C.J. Rep. 1961, p. 31.

ICJ, Nuclear Tests (Australia v. France), 20 December 1974, I.C.J. Rep. 1974, p. 268.

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, opened for signature 16 December 1966, UN Treaty Series vol 999, p. 171, entered into force 23 March 1976 (ICCPR), Article 6; European Convention on Human Rights opened for signature 4 November 1950, ETS no 005, entered into force 3 September 1953 (ECHR), Article 2; American Convention on Human Rights, opened for signature 22 November 1969, OAS, Treaty Series no 36, entered into force 18 July 1978 (ACHR), Article 4; African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights opened for signature 27 June 1981, OAU Doc. CAB/LEG/67/3 rev. 5, entered into force 21 October 1986 (AfrCHR), Article 4.

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, opened for signature 16 December 1966, UN Treaty Series vol 993, p. 3, entered into force 3 January 1976 (ICESCR).

ICCPR, Article 7; ECHR, Article 3; ACHR, Article 5; AfrCHR, Article 5.

ICCPR, Article 17; ECHR, Article 8; ACHR, Article 11.

See Macchi, Chap. 17.

van Dijk and van Hoof 1998, p. 74.

For example, the first sentence of the first paragraph of Article 2 ECHR, stating that ‘everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law’, clearly requires a positive intervention by the State to protect the right to life.

Article 1 ECHR: ‘the High Contracting Parties shall secure to everyone within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms defined in Section I of this Convention’.

Akandji-Kombe 2007, p. 15.

Pisillo-Mazzeschi 2008, p. 227.

Lavrysen 2014, p. 95.

ACtHR, Velásquez-Rodríguez v. Honduras, 29 July 1988, App. No 7920, para 166.

ACtHR, Olmedo-Bustos et al. v. Chile (“The Last Temptation of Christ”), 5 February 2001, App. No. 11803, para 87.

ACmHPR 2015, para 41.

Mba 2009.

ACmHPR, The Social and Economic Rights Action Center and the Center for Economic and Social Rights v. Nigeria, Decision 27 October 2001, Communication no 155/96, para 44: ‘internationally accepted ideas of the various obligations engendered by human rights indicate that all rights - both civil and political rights and social and economic - generate at least four levels of duties for a State that undertakes to adhere to a rights regime, namely the duty to respect, protect, promote, and fulfil these rights. These obligations universally apply to all rights and entail a combination of negative and positive duties. As a human rights instrument, the African Charter is not alien to these concepts’.

ACmHPR, Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum v. Zimbabwe, Decision 15 May 2006, Comm. No. 245/2002, para 143: ‘[…] human rights standards do not contain merely limitations on State’s authority or organs of State. They also impose positive obligations on States to prevent and sanction private violations of human rights. Indeed, human rights law imposes obligations on States to protect citizens or individuals under their jurisdiction from the harmful acts of other’.

Human Rights Committee 1981, paras 6–7.

Ibid., para 8.

Ibid.

Human Rights Committee 1992, para 2: ‘it is the duty of the State party to afford everyone protection through legislative and other measures as may be necessary against the acts prohibited by Art 7, whether inflicted by people acting in their official capacity, outside their official capacity or in a private capacity’.

Human Rights Committee 1982, para 6.

Human Rights Committee 2014.

Human Rights Committee 1988, para 9.

CESCR 2000, para 33.

CESCR 2016, para 61.

Human Rights Committee, Abubakar Amirov v. Russian Federation, 2 April 2009, Comm. No. 1447/2006.

Human Rights Committee, Individual concurring opinion by the Committee member Anja Seibert-Fohr, Nura Hamulić and Halima Hodžić v. Bosnia and Herzegovina, 30 March 2015, Comm. No. 2022/2011.

Akandji-Kombe 2007, p. 6. The first two cases in which the Court developed the notion are Marckx and Airey, both adopted in 1979, where—dealing with Article 8 ECHR—the Court stated that, although the object of such provision ‘is essentially that of protecting the individual against arbitrary interference by the public authorities, it does not merely compel the State to abstain from such interference: in addition to this primarily negative undertaking, there may be positive obligations inherent in an effective respect for private or family life’ (ECtHR, Marckx v. Belgium, 13 June 1979, App. No. 6833/74, para 31; Airey v. Ireland, 9 October 1979, App. No. 6289/73, para 32).

Pisillo-Mazzeschi 2008, p. 228: ‘[…] les actes des particuliers ne sont pas attribués à l’Etat, mais peuvent seulement représenter l’occasion extérieure pour un fait illicite différent, commis par les organes étatiques qui n’ont pas prévenu ou réprimé ces actes. En substance, l’Etat répond seulement si ses propres organes ont violé, par leur conduite d’omission, leur devoir de protection. […] [C]ette orientation doit être étendue du secteur de la protection des étrangers au secteur des droits de l’homme et elle constitue la base théorique pour justifier la théorie des effets horizontaux des droits de l’homme. Lorsque certains droits de l’homme imposent, explicitement ou implicitement, des obligations positives à effets horizontaux à la charge de l’Etat, la responsabilité de ce dernier ne naît que lorsqu’on démontre que les organes étatiques n’ont pas rempli leur devoir de protéger, par le biais de mesures de prévention ou de répression, les individus destinataires de ces obligations contre des immixtions arbitraires de la part d’autres individus privés’.

Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights, Research Report: Positive obligations on member States under Article 10 to protect journalists and prevent impunity, December 2011, p. 4.

A similar detailed list is contained under Article 5.2 of the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women (opened for signature on 11 May 2011, CETS no 210, entered into force on 1 August 2014), which distinguishes between negative and positive obligations and connects positive obligations with due diligence.

This distinction is drawn—mutatis mutandis—from the work of Pisillo-Mazzeschi (1992) on the State’s duty to protect aliens and foreign States representatives from harmful acts committed by private individuals. The Author explains that this duty includes two dimensions (the duty to prevent harmful acts and the duty to punish those responsible whenever a harmful act has occurred), stressing that each of them includes an obligation of conduct and an obligation of result. In particular, the duty to prevent is divided into the obligation to possess the necessary legal and administrative apparatus ‘normally able to guarantee respect for the international norm on prevention’ (p. 26), namely an obligation of result, and into the obligation to use such apparatus with due diligence, an obligation of conduct. The duty to punish also includes the duty to possess a minimum apparatus, which is not conditioned by due diligence requirement, and the duty to use it this enforcement mechanism, which depends only in part on due diligence. In fact, Pisillo-Mazzeschi additionally distinguishes between the duty to investigate, pursue and apprehend persons responsible for the harmful acts (which is subjected to due diligence) and the duty to try such persons, inflict a penalty and make sure this is properly carried out, which he considers an obligation of result (pp. 28–29). See also Pisillo-Mazzeschi 2008, pp. 390 ff.

Lavrysen 2014, p. 100.

Ibid., p. 99, quoting Ferrer Mac-Gregor and Möller 2012.

ECtHR (GC), Osman v. UK, 28 October 1998, App. No. 23452/94; Mahmut Kaya v. Turkey, 28 March 2000, App. No. 22535/93; Akkoç v. Turkey, 10 October 2000, App. No. 22947-22948/93.

IACtHR, Velásquez-Rodríguez v. Honduras; Godínez Cruz v. Honduras, 20 January 1989, App. No. 8097.

Pisillo-Mazzeschi 2008, p. 334.

ECtHR, Osman.

Ibid., para 117.

Ebert and Sijniensky 2015, p. 347.

See the following section for a focus on the principle of specialty.

ECtHR, Osman, para 116. See Macchi, Chap. 17, Sect. 17.​3.​2.

ACtHR, Pueblo Bello Massacre v. Colombia, 31 January 2006, App. No. 10566, 11748.

Frid 1995, p. 16.

ICJ, Reparation for Injuries Suffered in the Service of the United Nations, p. 180.

Le Floch 2015, p. 393.

De Schutter 2010, p. 116.

Le Floch 2015, p. 394. According to this author, ‘with respect to human rights, all IOs have a duty of vigilance. Thus international financial institutions must ensure that their actions do not have an effect on the human rights situation in their borrowing members’ (ibid.).

De Schutter 2010, p. 114.

Ibid.

See Gasbarri, Chap. 4 and Buscemi, Chap. 5.

See Macchi, Chap. 17.

See Capone, Chap. 18, Sect. 18.​3.​2.

In particular, the author refers to Article 100 of the UN Charter. Such provision ‘not only requires the agent to reject instructions from his state and to accept only those from the United Nations, but it also requires States Members to exercise no control over their nationals in their work as officials of the United Nations’: Eagleton 1950, p. 356.

Ibid., p. 357.

Ibid., p. 358.

Mégret and Hoffmann 2003, p. 323.