Human Rights Protection and the Notion of Responsibility: Some Considerations About the European Case Law on State’s Activities Under U.N. Charter

The notion of “responsibility” is a major topic of legal analysis and studies. The word comes from the Latin verb respondere, which means to vouch for further actions. In international law, it means “that a particular internationally wrongful act may be the source of new legal relations, not only between the guilty State and injured State, but also, between the former State and other States or, especially, between the former State and organizations of States”. Responsibility is then a network of relationships between various subjects of international law. Actually, responsibility appears as the stereotype of law, a “necessary corollary of law”, a concept “at the heart of international law”. Indeed, the law seems effective when the State or International Organisation responsible for a violation can be found: “the existence of an international legal order postulates that the subjects on whom duties are imposed should equally be responsible in case of a failure to perform these duties.” The responsibility arises “historically from the moral sense of obligation recognized by mankind everywhere; it is a necessary principle of social cooperation, and as such it has become embodied in all legal systems”. This importance of the responsibility mechanism relies in fact on two elements: on one hand, the responsibility itself, which is a purely legal institution, and, on the other hand, its practical consequences, which pertain to the peaceful settlement of disputes mechanisms. This contribution will focus on the first element and not on the mechanisms of the legal accountability, not because of the irrelevance of the latter but because of the more eloquent aspect regarding the influence of Human Rights Law of the former.