16 December 2014
SHARES Seminar on Shared Responsibility and Attribution in International Law
On Tuesday 16 December 2014, the seminar ‘Shared Responsibility and Attribution in International Law’ will be held in Komotini, Greece. The seminar is hosted by the Democritus University of Thrace.
This seminar will critically appraise the issue of attribution in the context of shared responsibility. The framework for the seminar will be the concept of shared responsibility as it has been developed in the SHARES Project. Shared responsibility refers to situations where multiple actors contribute towards a harmful outcome. Attribution of conduct is of central importance in the process of determining shared responsibility. While the broad contours of attribution have been explored within the framework of the project, particular issues pose further challenges to the approach of the International Law Commission (ILC) as it has been codified in the Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA) and the Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations (ARIO).
The structure of the seminar is as follows. Following an introduction to the problematique surrounding attribution in shared responsibility the presentations will focus on three issue areas. The first area covers questions of attribution regarding the Security Council and the member states of the United Nations. The second area concerns questions of attribution in the context of the activities of multinational corporations, focusing on the relationship between states and non-state actors. The third area turns the attention back to the relationship between states and international organisations, using as a case study the activities of FRONTEX.
A number of issues pertaining to attribution will be discussed such as the problem of multiple attribution, the differences between the mechanisms of attribution in the ARSIWA and the ARIO, as well as the problems posed by the operation of powerful non-state actors.
The programme is available here.