Source: https://www.ejiltalk.org/mh-17-goes-to-strasbourg-some-remarks-on-obligations-of-prevention-foreseeability-and-causation/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 01:06:08+00:00

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David Pusztai is a PhD candidate in international law at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge.
At the present stage many specific details are unclear, such as the admissibility of the claim or its articulation in the language of human rights law instead of international air law. There is, however, one apparently clear choice of legal strategy based on Professor Giemulla’s announcement: the identification of the internationally wrongful act in question, namely, Ukraine’s omission to close its airspace and to permit continued traffic.
Ukraine was indeed required to “take all practicable measures” to prevent offenses against the safety of international aviation under the 1971 Montreal Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation (Article 10). Given its sovereignty over its airspace, the customary duty to take reasonable steps to protect aliens within its territory required the same from Ukraine, just as its human rights obligations did under the European Convention of Human Rights. In Ilaşcu v. Moldova and Russiathe ECtHR held that the State’s positive obligations do not cease to exist when de facto it is not able to control a part of its territory. Ukraine, to use the Court’s language, “must endeavour, with all the legal and diplomatic means available to it vis-à-vis foreign States and international organisations, to continue to guarantee the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms defined in the Convention”, even within the territory controlled by separatists (see para. 333 of Ilaşcu).
The legal basis of MH 17’s presence in Ukraine’s airspace was Article 1 of the 1944 International Air Services Transit Agreement, conferring the right on foreign aircraft engaged in scheduled international air services to fly across its territory (both Ukraine and Malaysia are parties to the Agreement). Closing the airspace would have been one of the “legal means” available for Ukraine under the same Article, given that the exercise of this privilege (the “first freedom of the air”) is subject to the specific approval of Ukrainian authorities in “areas of active hostilities”according to the same Article 1. Further, Article 9 of the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation provides that States may, “for reasons of military necessity or public safety”, restrict or prohibit foreign aircraft from using certain parts of their airspace. One important constraint is that such restriction “shall be of a reasonable extent and location so as not to interfere unnecessarily with air navigation.” In fact, Ukraine exercised this right before the MH 17 tragedy and closed its airspace up to flight level 320 (32 000 ft); MH 17 was flying at flight level 330.
The question whether Ukraine’s failure to completely close its airspace before the incident is in itself a breach of international law (may it be international air law, international human rights law or law of the treatment of aliens) is an intriguing one, yet the present post focuses on a second possible hurdle for this claim: the issue of causation (for more on air law aspects, see Professor Abeyratne’s article here) . Article 31 of the ILC Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts [ARSIWA] provides that the obligation to provide reparation is conditional upon a causal nexus between the internationally wrongful act and the damage. Did Ukraine’s decision to leave open its airspace above flight level 320 in the Dnipropetrovsk Flight Information Region cause the downing of MH 17? It is certainly true that if Ukraine had not let MH 17 enter the aforementioned FIR, the tragedy would not have happened, so that a “but-for” or sine qua non test is fulfilled. It goes without saying, however, that the same applies to the decision of Malaysia Airlines to keep flying in the region or to the ongoing hostilities as such, not to mention the particular attack against the plane. What makes Ukraine’s omission the legally relevant cause here?
Responsibility for occasioning harm by omissions is not a novel problem in international law. Corfu Channelis the textbook example. The omission of Albania to warn two UK vessels about a minefield in Albanian territorial waters triggered her responsibility and impliedlywas held to have caused the damages suffered by the vessels. In holding so, it was crucial for the ICJ that, first, the territorial State must have had specific knowledge of the particular source of danger, the minefield threatening the safety of navigation and, second, that source of danger was the actual one that eventually materialized (pp. 22-23 of Corfu Channel). More recently, Bosnia Genocide confirmed not only that a causal nexus between the breach of a preventive obligation and the harm has to be established, but also that it is a very difficult exercise in practice (see paras. 430 and 462 and for a criticism of the Court’s approach to causation see A. Gattini, ‘Breach of the Obligation to Prevent and Reparation Thereof in the ICJ’s Genocide Judgment’ (2007) 18 European Journal of International Law 695, at 707-712. The question in Bosnia Genocide was slightly different: the threshold issue of “but-for” causality was not established, while in Corfu Channel and in the case of MH 17 this does not appear to be an issue).
The ECtHR follows a similar approach. Kiliç v. Turkeyis an example, confirming that the Court’s test to determine the extent of the State’s liability for its failure to comply with an obligation of prevention is whether the State had or should have had specific knowledge of the particular source of threat (a real and immediate risk) eventually causing the damage (such as an “identified or identifiable individual”, see at para. 63). As Judge Conforti noted, the Court applies a “foreseeability” test to assess the causal connection between the breach of the preventive obligation and the damages (see further B. Conforti, ‘Exploring the Strasbourg Case-law: Reflections on State Responsibility for the Breach of Positive Obligations’, in M. Fitzmaurice and D. Sarooshi (eds.), Issues of State Responsibility before International Judicial Institutions (2004, Hart Publishing), 129).
And here lies the first problem with MH 17: how could the Court determine whether a State had or should have had specific knowledge of a particular source of threat unlessit has a clear picture of the actual threat itself? Very little is known about the details of the incident. A preliminary report prepared by the Dutch Safety Board could not establish the origin of the attack, it merely confirmed that the plane disintegrated in the air, following a large number of impacts of high-energy objects from outside (p. 30). It is perfectly possible that by the time the case concludes there will be more information available. However, if this claim is an attempt to establish liability without the need to clarify the precise circumstances of the incident and possibly the identity of the actual perpetrators, such an attempt would and should be futile.
The mere facts that Ukraine was aware of certain risks in its airspace (demonstrated by its decision to partially close its airspace), that it nonetheless decided to keep its airspace partially open and that an incident happened in its airspace are insufficient facts to invoke Ukraine’s responsibility. In addition, the factual details of the actual incident have to be clarified and it has to be demonstrated that Ukraine was or should been aware of the real and immediate risk of such an incident. It could be then a matter of appreciation to determine exactly what specific details Ukraine should have foreseen.
The second problem is what we could call an issue of contribution to the injury, to use the language of Article 39 of ARSIWA. The region was widely known to be an area of hostilities, and the international aviation community recognized this well before the accident. Several airlines suspended their operation over this FIR before MH 17 was destroyed. In addition, the Ukrainian State Air Traffic Services Enterprise, providing air traffic services in the region, noted as early as April that there were safety risks in the Dnipropetrovks FIR due to the situation in Crimea. The Federal Aviation Administration of the US warned US carriers similarly in April that they should exercise “extreme caution” in the Dnipropetrovks FIR. It is simply implausible to say that Malaysia Airlines was not aware of flying into a zone of hostilities. If Ukraine’s conduct is characterized negligent, it is difficult to see how Malaysia Airlines’ conduct would be much different (unless there is evidence that some specific piece of information was available to Ukraine which could not and should not have been available to Malaysia Airlines). Still, Öneryildiz v. Turkeysuggests that the ECtHR requires the State to be “smarter” than the claimant. If the State tolerates negligent or even unlawful entrance to and stay in a dangerous area, the Court is reluctant to accept the defense of contributory negligence (see paras. 103-106).
In any event, in this case it is not Malaysia Airlines but the relatives of the passengers who are putting forward a claim for compensation. Thus, the negligence of Malaysia Airlines is not even really contributory within the meaning of Article 39 of ARSIWA from the perspective of the claimants. It would be rather a concurrent cause. This raises the question how to deal with the responsibility of Ukraine for letting MH 17 fly over the dangerous zone and the concurrent cause of the negligent route planning by Malaysia Airlines. Malaysia Airlines’ liability for such negligence rests on the 1999 Montreal Convention for the Unification of Certain Rues for International Carriage by Air (Article 21, for a concise discussion see here).
The ARSIWA commentary to Article 31 relies again on Corfu Channel to support the claim that there is no reduction of State liability in cases of concurrent causation. The contribution of a third private party is irrelevant for the purposes of reparation, unless specific elements of the injury are severable (see also J. Crawford, State Responsibility: The General Part (2013, CUP), 495-498). There might be an alternative reading of Corfu Channel. In Corfu Channel, Albania’s internationally wrongful conduct was subsequent in time to the actual minelaying and it might have broken the causal nexus as a superseding or intervening cause between the minelaying and the explosions. In contrast, the Malaysia Airlines aircraft flew into the dangerous zone following and not preceding Ukraine’s decision not to close its airspace.
It remains to be seen how the European Court of Human Rights approaches the multiplicity of legal issues surrounding the MH 17 incident. However, any expectation of a simpler solution to the question of liability from the Strasbourg route than from a thorough international investigation will probably be disappointed.
And where is the exhaustion of available domestic remedies? Has this Court ever been heard by a Ukrainian judge???
This is obviously a crucial question, but there is an indication in the Reuters report that they might attempt something at national level first (at least that is how I understand to reference to “manslaughter”). My post deliberaletly focused more on substantial issues, but as I wrote, admissibility might very well be the end of the story here.
David, thank you for an excellent post. It remains to be seen whether the victims’ families decide to proceed with their potential claims, but sad as it might be, it is not clear what they have to gain by doing so. An ECtHR complaint against Ukraine would not, in and of itself, shed light on what actually happened (most importantly, who fired the missile). As you have rightly mentioned, Strasbourg is no substitute for a thorough international investigation.
Now, Reuters’ report suggests that the families’ intent is to claim substantial compensation. It is my understanding that the ECtHR’s approach to compensation is highly fact-specific and difficult to predict. Yet, faced with various factors that contributed to the tragedy but were not brought about by Ukraine’s behaviour (i.e.the very same factors that you have discussed in the context of causation), it seems inconceivable that the Court would not take them into account when determining the amount of compensation. If that is correct, the utility of recourse to Strasbourg is rather questionable — unless the whole point of that is generating some more pressure on Ukraine so that it is active in investigation, rather than obtaining compensation.
Thank you for a great post. I have just have a short remark. It seems questionable to me whether the requirement of knowledge of a “real and immediate risk” actually translates into, as you put it, “knowledge of the particular source of threat”. The example you cite from para. 63 of Kiliç v. Turkey – “identified or identifiable individual” – does not refer to the source of threat but to those threatened. So how particular does the knowledge of the threat actually need to be? To me, the mere fact of ongoing hostilities where anti-aircraft weaponry had been used prior to the incident on several occasions seems as a risk that was sufficiently “real and immediate”.
Thank you very much for your comment, I share your thoughts. If the Court applied the customary rules on reparation (as codified and understood by the ILC), full reparation would be the remedy (admittedly, the Court considers the rules of the Convention on just satisfaction lex specialis, but it also puts emphasis on its alignment with the Chorzów Factory standard, see the recent Cyprus v. Turkey judgment of 12 May 2014, at paras. 40-42). Still, as you write, the actual amount of compensation is influenced by a number of factors in the Court’s practice and the extent or nature of the causal contribution could be one of those. The actual amounts sought look quite excessive, the original German press report speaks of “at least one million euro per victim”.
Thank you very much for your remark. I agree that there is room for flexibility in establishing foreseeability. The test of the identified individual in danger is not exclusive either. The Court emphasized on many occasions that “the positive obligations may apply not only to situations concerning the requirement of personal protection of one or more individuals identifiable in advance as the potential target of a lethal act, but also in cases raising the obligation to afford general protection to society” (see for instance Bljakaj and others v. Croatia, at para. 108). This should apply to the safety of national airspace.
The use of anti-aircraft weaponry in the ongoing hostilities prior to the incident might indeed pose a “real and immediate risk”, but it does not relieve the claimants from proving that the materialization of this risk caused the destruction of MH 17 and not something else. The origin of the attack should not be immaterial. For instance, and for the sake of argument, if it turned out that the missile was launched from Russia or from another aircraft and not from a surface-to-air system in Ukraine, foreseeability of the damage would be far less obvious.

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