Complicity and its Limits in the Law of International Responsibility

This book examines the responsibility of States and international organizations for complicity (aid or assistance) in an internationally wrongful act. Despite the recognition of responsibility for complicity as a rule of customary international law by the International Court of Justice, this book argues that the effectiveness and utility of this form of responsibility is fraught with systemic and operational limits. These limits include a lack of clarity in its constituent elements, its co-existence with primary rules prohibiting complicity and the obligations of due diligence, its implementation and the underlying causal tests, its uncertain relationship to other forms of shared and indirect responsibility, and its potential as a form of attribution of conduct. This book submits that the content and elements of this form of responsibility need adjustments to respond more effectively to the phenomenon of complicity in international affairs.

Awarded The Paul Guggenheim Prize in International Law 2017!

“This book is likely to spark debate amongst professionals in both law and politics. It also offers a snippet of what the law in this area could look like in the future. The ideas contained in the book are a result of rigorous research, objectively applied and insightfully explained. Complicity and Its Limits in the Law of International Responsibility is a thought-provoking work that confronts a status quo permeating much of international law.” —International and Comparative Law Quarterly

“...we consider to be noteworthy how the author has treated the following three aspects: (i) the relationship between complicity and several responsibility; (ii) the overlapping between complicity and due diligence obligations; and (iii) the legal effects bearing upon the complicit State.” —Italian Yearbook of International Law