ABSTRACT
This chapter revolves around two major points. The first is that levels of human insecurity—in all parts of the world—are much greater than we have been willing to acknowledge. Much of the debate in the field of human rights has been about whether physical integrity violations by state actors may (or may not) be decreasing. However, what gets lost in all this is the degree to which such violations comprise only a portion of the sources of human insecurity in the world, and a relatively small portion at that. Secondly, the law on state responsibility does not come close to reflecting the manner in which states contribute to human harm. One of the questions initially taken up in the Nicaragua case was whether the United States had committed an internationally wrongful act when American agents mined Nicaragua’s harbors; in the Bosnia case the ICJ first addressed the question of whether a state is prohibited from committing genocide. To be sure, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) answered both of these questions in the affirmative. Still, what is striking is that such issues even had to be addressed at all. Yet, while the law on state responsibility does seem capable of addressing situations where a state acts directly—both within its own domestic realm but even when it acts in another state—this same law remains contested and uncertain otherwise.
