Source: https://m.ebrary.net/49059/law/nuhanovic_netherlands_judgment_b9225_mustafic_netherlands_judgment_b9228_supreme_court_netherlands
Timestamp: 2020-05-27 00:04:02
Document Index: 191197234

Matched Legal Cases: ['art. 4', 'art. 8', 'arts 2', 'art 5', '§ 6', '§ 6', '§ 9', 'art. 48', 'art. 7', 'art. 6', 'art. 7', 'art. 8', 'art. 7', 'art. 8', 'art. 4', 'art. 8', 'art. 6', 'art. 2', 'art. 1', 'art. 2', 'art. 1', 'art. 7', 'art. 4']

Nuhanovic v Netherlands, Judgment, BZ9225, and Mustafic v Netherlands, Judgment, BZ9228, Supreme Court of The Netherlands, 6 September 2013 - Judicial decisions on the law of international organizations -
Nuhanovic v Netherlands, Judgment, BZ9225, and Mustafic v Netherlands, Judgment, BZ9228, Supreme Court of The Netherlands, 6 September 2013
The Nuhanovic and Mustafic cases deal with the legal responsibility of The Netherlands for acts committed by a battalion of Dutch soldiers, placed at the disposal of the UN to take part in a peacekeeping mission.1 In its judgment, the Dutch Supreme Court made extensive use of the Draft Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (DARS),[1] [2] and the Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations (ARIO) of the International Law Commission (ILC).[3] While the question of attribution is decided on the basis of international law, the wrongfulness of the conduct of the Dutch peacekeepers is assessed mainly on the basis of local domestic (Bosnia-Herzegovina) private law. Nonetheless, as an obiter dictum, the Supreme Court also had something interesting to say about the extraterritorial application of international human rights law in a case such as this one.
The war in the former Yugoslavia began in the early 1990s, when Slovenia and Croatia, soon followed by Bosnia-Herzegovina, declared themselves independent, and the central authorities of Yugoslavia reacted with violence.[4] The response of the UN was the establishment of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR)[5] Part of the UN’s peacekeeping or peace-enforcement strategy was to designate so-called ‘safe areas’, enclaves of peace where civilians could hide from the war. Srebrenica became such a ‘safe area’ in April 1993.[6] Around 200 lightly armed troops, placed at the disposal of UNPROFOR by The Netherlands, were stationed in a compound near a village called Potocari, situated less than ten kilometres from Srebrenica. Their mission was to protect the civilians from the warring parties. In exchange, the civilians had to surrender their weapons, if they had any, to the UN. Unfortunately, the Dutch peacekeepers could not prevent the fall of Srebrenica into the hands of the
Bosnian-Serb Army in July 1995. Thousands of Muslims hiding in the ‘safe area’ were killed by the Bosnian-Serbs almost as soon as the Dutch peacekeepers evacuated. Not long after this Srebrenica genocide, the war ended with a cease-fire signed in November 1995 in Dayton, Ohio (USA).
Hasan Nuhanovic worked as an interpreter for the UN Military Observers. In this capacity, he provided assistance to ‘Dutchbat’, the name commonly used to refer to the battalion of Dutch UN peacekeepers stationed near Srebrenica. When the enclave fell, the peacekeepers all left the area. Hasan Nuhanovic was permitted to leave with the soldiers of Dutchbat. Dutchbat refused to take the relatives of Hasan Nuhanovic with them as well. These relatives were basically handed over to the Bosnian-Serb Army, and Hasan’s brother and father were killed together with thousands of other Bosnian Muslims.
Nuhanovic asked the Dutch Court to declare that The Netherlands had committed a wrongful act by Dutchbat’s refusal to take his relatives along when Dutchbat evacuated after the fall of Srebrenica. This refusal ultimately led to their death, and Dutchbat did know or should have known this. The legal questions are thus the following: Can Dutchbat’s conduct be attributed to the state of The Netherlands? And if so, was Dutchbat’s conduct wrongful, in the sense that it was in breach of an existing legal obligation of The Netherlands?
Can Dutchbat’s conduct be attributed to the State?
3.8.2 It follows from articles 4 and 8 DARS that Dutchbat’s conduct can be attributed to the State if Dutchbat should be considered as an organ of the State (art. 4 (1) DARS) or if Dutchbat in fact acted on the instructions or under the direction or control of the State (art. 8 DARS).
3.9.1 In the proceedings before the Court of Appeal the debate between the parties focused on the question of whether the circumstance that Dutchbat had been placed at the disposal of the United Nations by the State meant that Dutchbat’s conduct could be attributed not to the State pursuant to article 4 (1) or article 8 DARS but only to the United Nations. The provisions of the ARIO are of relevance in connection with the latter point.
[The Court then lists the relevant provisions in ARIO, esp. arts. 6, 7, and 48, and cites from the ILC Commentary to these articles.]
3.9.4 The Commentary on Part Two, Chapter II ARIO notes that articles 6-9 ARIO do not necessarily mean that conduct must be exclusively attributed to an international organization—thereby resulting in exclusive responsibility of the international organization—but instead leave open the possibility of conduct being attributed to an international organization and a State, which would then result in dual attribution to the international organization and the State concerned [...] Article 48 (1) ARIO [.] expressly leaves open the possibility of more than one State or organization being held responsible for the consequences of an internationally wrongful act. [...]
3.10.2 It is apparent from the Commentary on article 7 ARIO [...] that this attribution rule applies, inter alia, to the situation in which a State places troops at the disposal of the United Nations in the context of a UN peace mission, and command and control is transferred to the United Nations, but the disciplinary powers and criminal jurisdiction (the ‘organic command’) remain vested in the seconding State. It is implicit in the findings of the Court of Appeal that this situation occurs in the present case. After all [.] the Court of Appeal has held—and this has not been disputed in the cassation appeal—that it is not at issue that The Netherlands, as the troop- contributing State, retained control over the personnel affairs of the military personnel concerned, who had remained in the service of The Netherlands, and retained the power to punish these military personnel under disciplinary and criminal law. [.]
3.11.3 [.] For the purpose of deciding whether the State had effective control it is not necessary for the State to have countermanded the command structure of the United Nations by giving instructions to Dutchbat or to have exercised operational command independently. It is apparent from the Commentary on article 7 ARIO [. ] that the attribution of conduct to the seconding State or the international organization is based on the factual control over the specific conduct, in which all factual circumstances and the special context of the case must be taken into account. In the disputed findings of law the Court of Appeal has examined, in the light of all circumstances and the special context of the case, whether the State had factual control over Dutchbat’s disputed conduct. The Court of Appeal has not therefore interpreted or applied the law incorrectly.
3.13 The above findings lead to the conclusion that parts 2 and 3 of the cassation appeal oppose in vain the Court of Appeal’s ruling that the State had effective control over the conduct of which Dutchbat—and hence the State as well—is accused by Nuhanovic. Given this position, the Court of Appeal was able to find on the basis of the attribution rule of article 7 ARIO, which is applicable to this case, partly in view of what is provided in the attribution rule of article 8 DARS—that Dutchbat’s disputed conduct can be attributed to the State.
Was Dutchbat’s conduct wrongful?
[The Supreme Court first explains that the application of the relevant domestic law of Bosnia and Herzegovina already leads the Court to the conclusion that the State acted wrongfully towards Nuhanovic. Nonetheless ...]
3.16 The Supreme Court would observe, by way of obiter dictum [...] as follows.
3.17.1 Part 5 [of the grounds of appeal] submits that any assessment of Dutchbat’s disputed conduct by reference to the legal principles implicit in articles 2 and 3 ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights] and articles 6 and 7 ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] is prevented by the fact that the State did not have jurisdiction as referred to in article 1 ECHR and article 2 (1) ICCPR either in Srebrenica or in the compound in Potocari. This submission fails.
3.17.2 According to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the possibility is not excluded that a Contracting State may, in exceptional circumstances, have the jurisdiction referred to in article 1 ECHR even outside its territory (cf. ECtHR 7 July 2011, no. 55721/07, NJ 2012/430 (Al-Skeini and Others v. the United Kingdom)).
3.17.3 In this case Dutchbat’s presence in Srebrenica and in the compound in Potocari resulted from the participation of The Netherlands in UNPROFOR, and UNPROFOR derived its right to take action in Srebrenica from the Agreement on the status of the United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina concluded between the United Nations and Bosnia and Herzegovina [...]. This means that the State was competent, through Dutchbat, to exercise jurisdiction within the meaning of article 1 ECHR in the compound. Nor can it be said that, after the fall of the enclave on 11 July 1995 and, in particular, at the moment of Dutchbat’s disputed conduct, it was de facto impossible for the State to exercise jurisdiction as referred to above in the compound. According to the facts on which it has based its judgment, the Court of Appeal has assumed that the Bosnian Serb army respected Dutchbat’s authority over the compound to which it had withdrawn until the departure of Dutchbat on 21 July 1995. These facts provide a sufficient basis for the view that the State, through Dutchbat, was actually able to ensure compliance with the human rights enshrined in articles 2 and 3 ECHR and articles 6 and 7 ICCPR in relation to Muhamed and Ibro Nuhanovic.
In this commentary, the most interesting parts of the judgment will be evaluated critically. The Dutch Supreme Court judgment in Nuhanovic will also be compared with a more recent judgment of The Hague District Court, in a case between the Mothers of Srebrenica (Foundation) and The Netherlands.[7] In this most recent judgment, the state of The Netherlands was essentially held responsible for the deaths of the male refugees that were deported by the Bosnian Serbs from the compound in Potocari after the fall of Srebrenica.
For a state to be legally responsible, the conduct must be attributable to the state, and that conduct must constitute a breach of a legal obligation.[8] The Dutch Supreme Court dealt with attribution and the wrongfulness of the acts separately. In this commentary, this approach will be followed.
When examining the question of attribution, the Dutch Supreme Court applied only international law. In doing so, it uncritically followed the Dutch Appeals Court. Both Courts held that the question of attribution was closely related to the interpretation of the agreement between The Netherlands and the UN on the provision of Dutch troops. And since this was an international agreement, the attribution question had to be answered on the basis of international law.9
What does international law say about attribution in this context? It is the view of the UN Legal Counsel and Secretariat that, when soldiers replace their own helmets with the blue helmets of a UN peacekeeping mission, their actions should normally be attributable to the UN. The UN generally affirms that ‘as a subsidiary organ of the United Nations, an act of a peacekeeping force is, in principle, imputable to the Organization’.10 The ILC acknowledges that this has been the practice of the UN since the very early days (United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC) in 1960s), a consistent practice which is reflected in the many agreements made between the UN and troop-contributing states." This practice is different when it comes to peace-enforcement operations, where the UN Security Council authorizes states to take military action. In such operations, the soldiers do not wear blue helmets but instead keep their own national helmets on. And the leadership on the ground over the military operation is left to the states that take part in such so-called ‘coalitions of the willing’. With regard to such peace-enforcement missions, it is the UN’s view that ‘the conduct of the operation is imputable to the State or States conducting the operation’/2
But the ILC disagrees with the UN Secretariat’s rigid distinction between peacekeeping and peace-enforcement missions. It is the ILC’s view that the same rule, that is that it all depends on who has effective control over the specific acts concerned," ‘should also apply to peacekeeping operations, insofar as it is possible to distinguish in their regard areas of effective control respectively pertaining to the United Nations and the contributing State’." The use of the word ‘should’ is interesting, because it suggests that the ILC is here proposing a change in the law. And it explains its reasons to do so, as follows: While it is understandable that, for the sake of efficiency of military operations, the UN insists on claiming exclusive command and control over peacekeeping forces, attribution of conduct should also in this regard be based on a factual criterion.
All this suggests that, in view of the ILC, the UN and the troop-contributing states ought to change their fifty years of consistent practice of holding the UN, in principle, responsible for the acts of peacekeeping operations, and that they should instead base responsibility as from today on a factual criterion.
The ILC did not find much support in existing case law for this new approach. The judgments of the ECtHR, discussed elsewhere in this book, to which the ILC referred in its commentary, either chose a different criterion altogether (primarily Behrami),15 or were related to peace-enforcement missions, or even to acts of a multinational occupying force (Al-Jedda).16 In fact, the only example that the ILC could find, in its ARIO commentary of 2011, of a case in which the effective control criterion was applied to a peacekeeping mission, was the Court of Appeal’s judgment in this very same Nuhanovic case.
ю UN Doc. A/CN.4/545, section II.G, p. 17, as cited in A/66/10, § 6, at 88.
11 See A/66/10, § 6, at 88. " See UN Doc. A/CN.4/545, section II.G, at 18.
13 Article 7 ARIO. M See A/66/10, § 9, at 90.
15 ECtHR (Grand Chamber), App. Nos. 71412/01 and 78166/01, 2 May 2007, Decision as to the Admissibility of App. No. 71412/01 by Agim Behrami and Bekir Behrami against France and App. No. 78166/01 by Ruzhdi Saramati against France, Germany, and Norway, available at http://www.echr.coe.int.
16 ECtHR (Grand Chamber), App. No. 27021/08, 2 May 2007, Judgment (Merits and Just Satisfaction), Case of Al-Jedda v United Kingdom, available at http://www.echr.coe.int.
It is noble of the UN that it so generously accepts legal responsibility for the conduct of its peacekeepers. In a way, the organization thereby protects the troop- contributing state from all sorts of lawsuits. If a troop-contributing state finds itself confronted with a claim for reparation of damages caused by the conduct of peacekeepers, it can simply refer the claimant to the UN. However, as evidenced by an earlier ruling of the Dutch Supreme Court in the case between the Mothers of Srebrenica and The Netherlands, which is discussed elsewhere in this book, due to the UN’s immunity before domestic courts and its reluctance to create an alternative legal remedy within the UN system, it is actually very difficult for an individual to hold the UN responsible before a court of law.17 And thus, in the absence of a legal remedy against the UN, one cannot be surprised that persons claiming to be the victim of a wrongful act allegedly committed by a UN peacekeeper will begin proceedings against the troop-contributing stated8
This unfortunate situation of claimants having nowhere to go might have motivated the ILC to disagree with the UN that the conduct of peacekeepers should always be attributed to the organization. The ILC’s rejection of the categorical distinction between peacekeeping missions and peace-enforcement missions that the UN makes can also be defended on the basis that peacekeeping forces are sent into conflict zones with mandates which are more and more robust, and on the basis that troop-contributing states insist on having more and more control over ‘their’ peacekeepers. From a policy perspective, the better view is that the question of who is responsible—the UN and/or the troop-contributing state—must be answered by considering which of the two in fact had the effective control over the specific conduct for which responsibility is disputed. But this view is not (yet) supported in actual UN peacekeeping practice, and this of course is no minor detail at a moment when a Court of law is asked to identify the applicable customary international law at the time the acts took place.
What did the Dutch Courts do? Did they side with the UN, the ILC, or did they decide a different approach altogether? First of all, the Dutch Supreme Court accepted that the same conduct could in principle be attributed both to The Netherlands and to the UN.19 In reaching this decision, the Court made use of art. 48 ARIO, but its interpretation of this article has been convincingly challenged elsewhere.20 Moreover, any references to evidence of a consistent state practice supporting Rule 48 ARIO are absent in the Dutch Supreme Court judgment.
!7 See Aleksandar Momirov’s commentary of Mothers of Srebrenica v The Netherlands & the UN, LJN: BW1999, Dutch Supreme Court, 13 April 2012; and Stichting Mothers of Srebrenica and Others against The Netherlands, App. No. 65542/12, European Court of Human Rights, 11 June 2013.
!8 Mothers of Srebrenica judgment of 16 July 2014, at para. 4.35.
!9 For a recent commentary on how the Dutch Supreme Court dealt with the attribution issue, see also O.F. Direk, ‘Responsibility in Peace Support Operations: Revisiting the Proper Test for Attribution Conduct and the Meaning of the “Effective Control” Standard’, in The Netherlands International Law Review, Vol. 61, Issue 1, May 2014, pp. 1-22.
20 See A/66/10, pp. 144-5. For a critique, see Cedric Ryngaert’s case note in The Netherlands International Law Review, Vol. 60, Issue 3, December 2013, pp. 441-6.
Now that the same conduct is in principle attributable to both the UN and to The Netherlands, the Dutch Supreme Court can assess the responsibility of The Netherlands without having to look at the responsibility of the UN as well. This is important, because the UN was not a party to the proceedings in Nuhanovic, and thus the Dutch Court could not make any pronouncements, direct or indirect, on the legal responsibilities of the UN.
The Supreme Court based its decision on attribution primarily on art. 7 ARIO, which states that the conduct of an organ placed at the disposal of an international organization by a state must be considered to be the conduct of that international organization, when the organization has effective control over the conduct.[9] [10] The Netherlands argued that art. 6 ARIO was the relevant provision, and not art. 7. Article 6 ARIO simply states that the conduct of an organ of an international organization is attributable to that international organization. The argument of the state was thus that the peacekeepers were a UN organ. This, as explained above, is also the view of the UN itself. But the Supreme Court followed the ILC Commentary to ARIO, according to which a battalion of peacekeepers is not a UN organ, because the battalion to a certain extent still acts as an organ of the state supplying the soldiers. Important is the fact that the troop-contributing state retains disciplinary powers and criminal jurisdiction over its peacekeepers.22
Interestingly, the Dutch Supreme Court also referred to art. 8 DARS. Strictly speaking, art. 7 ARIO says nothing about the attribution of conduct of an organ placed at the disposal of an international organization by a state to that state. All it says is that, if the international organization does not have effective control over the conduct of the organ, then it is not responsible for that conduct. But that does not mean that, by definition, this makes the state responsible in such cases. In theory, it could very well be that neither of the two is responsible. And so to complete the picture, the Dutch Supreme Court relied on art. 8 DARS. According to this provision, the conduct of a group of persons shall be considered an act of a state if the group is in fact acting under the effective control of that state in carrying out the conduct. This provision was meant to make it possible to attribute acts of persons not formally part of the state system to the state in exceptional circumstances. One may wonder why the Supreme Court did not instead make use of art. 4 DARS, according to which the conduct of any state organ shall be considered an act of that state. If peacekeepers are not UN organs, as the UN itself claims, then it would be logical to consider the peacekeeping force as a state organ. They are not the mercenaries, militants, or band of irregulars for which art. 8 DARS was designed. If we follow the Dutch Supreme Court, the peacekeepers are nobody’s organ; and whoever happens to be in control of them at the relevant time is responsible for their actions”
B. Wrongfulness
When assessing the wrongfulness of the acts attributable to The Netherlands, the Dutch Supreme Court situated itself primarily in the domestic legal order of Bosnia- Herzegovina—the rules of private international law require that the Court applies the lex loci delicti commissi. Interestingly, in the Mothers of Srebrenica case, the Hague District Court held that the rules of private international law prescribe that, when a state exercises sovereign powers over a particular area outside its territorial jurisdiction, that the law of that state applies.[11] [12] [13] [14] Because the Hague District Court was convinced that The Netherlands had effective control over the compound in Potocari at the relevant time, it held Dutch—as opposed to Bosnia-Herzegovinian—private law applicable to the events in the compound.
Nuhanovic had argued that The Netherlands (Dutchbat) had committed a wrongful act (tort) by not making every possible effort to avoid the death of his two relatives. The existence of such an obligation in the legal order of Bosnia-Herzegovina could be based on domestic provisions of private (tort) law, but also on international law, as international law has direct effect within the Bosnian legal order. And thus international law re-emerged on the scene through the backdoor. The most relevant international obligation is the state’s responsibility to guarantee to all within its jurisdiction the enjoyment of the right to life. This human right is codified in art. 6 ICCPR, and art. 2 ECHR.
In view of the Supreme Court, Bosnian tort law alone could suffice to establish the wrongfulness of the acts” Nonetheless, as an obiter dictum, the Court wished to say something about the applicability of international human rights law to the situation. The Supreme Court held that the international human rights provisions mentioned may indeed be invoked against The Netherlands, because the acts concerned did fall within the jurisdiction of The Netherlands in the sense of art. 1 ECHR and art. 2(1) ICCPR. Earlier, the Dutch District Court in Nuhanovic had referred to the Bankovic case of the ECHR in support of the argument that the term ‘jurisdiction’ in art. 1 ECHR should ‘be interpreted as an essentially territorial concept’, and the acts took place in Bosnia and not in The Netherlands” But the Supreme Court, relying on the Al-Skeini judgment of the same ECtHR, noted that the jurisdiction of a party to the ECHR extends, in exceptional circumstances, also to areas outside its own territory.27
When determining whether the acts of Dutchbat fell within the Dutch ‘human rights jurisdiction’, the Supreme Court looked closely at the formal legal arrangements and at the facts and the situation on the ground. It implicitly distinguished a de jure and de facto basis of extraterritorial jurisdiction. The Netherlands formally (de jure) had jurisdiction because the territorial entity, the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina, had surrendered its competence to govern in the area to UNPROFOR.[15] Clearly, UNPROFOR cannot be equated with The Netherlands, but considering the Supreme Court’s answer to the attribution question (see above), this was nonetheless relevant. The Netherlands also had de facto jurisdiction, because an examination of the facts had shown that it was not impossible for The Netherlands to exercise jurisdiction through Dutchbat, and prevent the human rights violations from happening. It could have done so, but it did not.2[16]
C. Conclusion and policy implications
This case is unique in many ways. It is one of the first cases in which ARIO is applied to a UN peacekeeping mission. It is also unique in the sense that the acts concerned were not examples of isolated misconduct by individual soldiers acting ultra vires, or peacekeepers causing car accidents or something in that category. Instead, this case dealt with a failure of the peacekeepers to protect some of the individuals they were supposed to protect. It is especially because of the latter aspect that the judgment caused a lot of concern. The Dutch Minister for Defence was asked recently if a Srebrenica type-situation, in which the UN loses control of a UN peacekeeping mission and the troop contributor is obligated to step in, could occur again in the future. She replied that a change in the situation in the area where a peacekeeping mission operates, for example the outbreak of large-scale hostilities or a general deterioration of the situation, may always lead to the situation in which the UN is no longer able to control the execution of the mission. This, said the Minister, may be a reason for the troop- contributing state to fill in the void and take effective control.
If The Netherlands’ approach for the future is to take over control from the UN much sooner and with much more confidence than was done in Srebrenica, then the responsibility of The Netherlands is of course much sooner engaged. This is a consequence of the application of the ‘effective control’ criterion. Applying art. 7 ARIO and/or 8 DARS—or perhaps even art. 4 DARS—will then quickly lead to the conclusion that The Netherlands exercises effective control over the peacekeepers, and that The Netherlands is responsible for their conduct. The Netherlands is thus not trying to avoid responsibility in the future by prohibiting the Dutch authorities in The Hague from ever getting involved in the direction and control of peacekeeping missions. Instead, The Netherlands has chosen the exact opposite strategy: in order not to be held responsible for a failure of Dutch peacekeepers in the future, The Netherlands will prevent such failures, by involving itself more intensely in the way peacekeeping missions are conducted.[17]
[1] From a legal point of view at least, the two cases—Nuhanovic and Mustafic—are very much alike,and thus the focus in this comment will be on just one of them: the case of Hasan Nuhanovic.
[2] Report of the ILC’s fifty-third session, Y.I.L.C. Vol. II, Part Two.
[3] Report of the ILC’s sixty-third session (2011), UN Doc. A/66/10.
[4] For an analysis of the facts, see especially The Fall of Srebrenica (Report of the UN Secretary-General), 15 November 1999, UN Doc. A/54/549; Rapport sur les evenements de Srebrenica (Reportof the Assemblee Nationale of France), 22 November 2001; Srebrenica—A ‘Safe’ Area (Report of TheNetherlands Institute for War Documentation), 10 April 2002 (available at http://213.222.3.5/srebrenica);Missie zonder vrede (Report of Dutch Parliament), January 2003.
[5] SC Resolutions 758 of 8 June 1992 and 981, 982, and 983 of 31 March 1995.
[6] SC Resolution 819 (1993) of 16 April 1993, para. 1.
[7] Mothers of Srebrenica v Netherlands, Judgment, The Hague District Court, 16 July 2014,ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2014:8748.
[8] Article 2, DARS. 9 Nuhanovic v Netherlands, para. 3.6.2.
[9] Mothers of Srebrenica (n. 7): para. 4.33 where the Hague District Court followed this route.
[10] A/66/10, at para. 7 and pp. 88-9. 23 The exact opposite has also been suggested, that is that a peacekeeping force can be both a stateorgan and a UN subsidiary organ at the same time. See p. 180 of M. Tondini, ‘The “Italian Job”: How tomake International Organisations Compliant with Human Rights and Accountable for their Violationby Targeting Member States’, in J. Wouters, E. Brems, S. Smis, and P. Schmitt (eds), Accountability forHuman Rights Violations by International Organisations (Antwerp, Intersentia 2010).
[11] Mothers of Srebrenica (n. 7), para. 4.167.
[12] 25 Nuhanovic v Netherlands, paras 3.15.4 4 and 3.15.5.
[13] 26 Nuhanovic v Netherlands, para. 4.12.3. Reference was made to ECtHR (Grand Chamber), App. No.52207/99, 12 December 2001, Decision as to the Admissibility, Case of Bankovic and Others v Belgium andOthers, available at http://www.echr.coe.int.
[14] ECtHR (Grand Chamber), App. No. 55721/07, 7 July 2011, Judgment (Merits and Just Satisfaction),Case of Al-Skeini and Others v United Kingdom, available at http://www.echr.coe.int
[15] Nuhanovic v Netherlands: para. 3.17.3. 29 Ibid.
[16] 30 Answers provided on 11 March 2014 by Hennis-Plasschaert, Minister of Defense of The Netherlands,
[17] to questions raised by Dutch Parliamentarians on 29 January 2014. The document is available at http://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/, under ‘Kamerstuk’ 29521-235.