PEACEKEEPING E ILLECITI A DANNO DELLE POPOLAZIONI LOCALI: RESPONSABILITÀ E RIMEDI

Illicit acts committed against local populations during peacekeeping missions may entail the international responsibility/tortious liability of international organisations and their member States. Since military contingents deployed during peacekeeping missions are State organs placed at the disposal of international organisations, it is very difficult to establish which entity is responsible for the wrongful acts and omissions put in place by peacekeepers. To give an answer to this question, it is necessary to understand the rules concerning attribution of conduct of State organs placed at the disposal of an international organisations. Though considerable work has been done in in this regard, the issue is still debated. Moreover, it is not easy to determine which remedies are available to individuals injured by peacekeeping missions, because of lack of practice and information. The objective of the research activity was, on one side, to get more insight into the meaning of 'effective control' (i.e. the criterion suggested by the United Nations International Law Commission within the Draft articles on responsibility of international organisations to solve the issue of attribution of conduct of peacekeepers) in order to identify its constitutive elements; on the other side, the research was aimed at analyzing existing reparation mechanisms, in order to evaluate their efficiency and their compatibility with the so called equivalent protection theory. In reference to attribution, the study allowed to elaborate a notion of 'effective control' which should be able to attribute the conduct of peacekeepers to the entity that under the specific circumstances of the case presents a factual link with them. For what regards the remedies issue, the research allowed to identify the shortcomings affecting existing mechanisms and to formulate some de lege ferenda proposals to improve their efficiency.