ABSTRACT
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia have produced a limited amount of case law on omissions. This chapter discusses the requirements for the conduct of the Dutch and Belgian commanders to be qualified as an international crime, which would give international courts a primary right of jurisdiction over the conduct committed. It presents command responsibility as an example of codifying liability for omissions in international criminal law. The chapter considers the position of omission liability in the international criminal law spectrum and then discusses the specific elements required to establish omission liability. Applying these elements to the facts of the Srebrenica and Rwanda cases illustrates the potential consequences that applying the law on omissions in a context of peacekeeping would have for the commanders involved. The immunity granted to the military component of a peacekeeping operation by the status of forces agreement does not exclude international courts from exercising their jurisdiction regarding international crimes.
