Commission’s Articles on State Responsibility: Introduction, Text and Commentaries, (2002), 117). This led the prosecution to submit before the Court of Appeal that it would be anomalous if torture committed by a public official of an insurrectional movement exercising governmental functions over territory in which it exercises de facto control should be treated as outside the scope of the Torture Convention, so as to attract no individual responsibility, because the acts were not those of a de jure State, in circumstances where the very same acts would constitute acts of the State for which the State would assume responsibility, if the insurrectional movement was successful and became the de jure government. 55. This submission was not pursued before the Supreme Court, rightly in my view. The question of the attribution of conduct to States for the purposes of State responsibility is distinct from the responsibility of individuals whether under international law (article 58 of the Draft ILC Articles) or, as in this case, under national law where it implements an international convention. It would, moreover, be an unsatisfactory state of affairs if the question whether conduct constituted torture within article 1 of UNCAT were to depend on whether the entity to which the perpetrators belonged subsequently succeeded in replacing the government of the State concerned. Relevance of recognition of States and Governments 56. The appellant’s suggested reading of article 1 gives rise to a number of difficulties and anomalies concerning issues of recognition of States and governments. First, before the Court of Appeal the appellant submitted that the term “person acting in an official capacity” is limited to a person acting for or on behalf of a government authority of a recognised State, a submission which was rejected by the Court of Appeal. At the hearing before the Supreme Court that submission was no longer maintained. For present purposes it is not necessary to embark on a consideration of the relevance, if any, of recognition to statehood in international law. It is sufficient to refer to the following observation of Chief Judge Newman in the US Court of Appeals, Second Circuit in Kadic v Karadic 70 F 3d 232 (2d Cir 1995), at 245 with which I respectfully agree. “The customary international law of human rights, such as the proscription of official torture, applies to states without distinction between recognized and unrecognized states … It would be anomalous indeed if non-recognition by the United States, which typically reflects disfavour with a foreign regime - sometimes due to human rights abuses - had the perverse effect of shielding officials of the unrecognized regime from liability for those violations of international law norms that apply only to state actors.” Page 27

Select target paragraph3

Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents