ABSTRACT
Juridical indicators that state accountability is more than simply a political aspiration and has legal validity are of little utility without practical evidence that a global consensus can, and is, mobilised when states breach international law in such a way that threatens the interests of the international community as a whole. Therefore, this chapter applies the interpretative framework developed throughout the preceding discussion to state practice to determine whether the various responses (or lack thereof) by the international community when states breach jus cogens norms demonstrates there is, or is evolving, a norm of accountability. Protecting the interests of the global community, rather than states acting merely out of self-preservation, was the impetus for signifi cant changes in international relations throughout the 20th century – notably seen with the establishment of the United Natious (UN). It is thus particularly appropriate to introduce the case studies and reiterate the argument that the protection of international interests is now inspiring an evolution in international law at the start of the 21st century, by referring to the largest meeting of states hosted by the US since the San Francisco Conference that established the UN in 1945. Central to the agenda of the April 2010 Nuclear Security Summit (attended by 47 states, the UN, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the European Council) was gaining a consensus amongst participants as to the establishment and maintenance of a legal structure capable of ensuring adequate regulatory supervision of states’ nuclear holdings and industry. A peripheral goal to the summit’s primary objective of non-proliferation
(NP) was ‘the need to hold nations accountable when they do not live up to their NP obligations’284 and it is argued here that Iran was the primary target of such accountability measures.
