Responsibility of the United Nations for Wrongful Acts Occurred in the Framework of Authorized Operations in Light of the Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations (dario)
When the Security Council authorizes a State or an international organization to use force, it entrusts it with authority over the chain of command of the operation. That is why the un has always declined to assume responsibility for conduct occurring in the context such operations. While this position is widely supported by practice, and by the 2011 Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations (dario) of the International Law Commission (ilc), certain cases brought before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) such as Behrami/Saramati have challenged this principle. These cases had the merit of bringing to the fore uncertainties about the rules of responsibility applicable to complex schemes of peacekeeping. This study aims to address the question: in the light of the dario, to what extent could responsibility be attributed to the un for conduct occurred in the framework of authorized operations, and what kind of responsibility would that be? First, it argues that no basis can be found in the principles of independent responsibility to justify the attribution of wrongful conduct committed on the occasion of authorized operations to the un, unless in exceptional factual circumstances. Second, it contends that indirect responsibility could be an appropriate way to apprehend the specific relationships established between the un on the one hand and the operations it has authorized on the other hand.