Thus chapter discusses the basics of international responsibility, focusing mostly on states. It details how states can be held responsible, what the consequences thereof may be, and discusses the circumstances precluding wrongfulness. It further analyzes the responsibility of international organizations and of individuals under international law

In September 2020, six Portuguese children and young adults filed a climate change case with the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’) against thirty-three European states, comprising Europe’s major emitters. This chapter outlines the basis on which they argue that these states are violating their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (‘ECHR’) by failing to adopt the radical measures required to safeguard their futures. In particular, it outlines how principles of shared state responsibility are invoked alongside a related general principle of law applicable in situations involving causal uncertainty and multiple wrongdoers to address the ambiguity surrounding the extent of states’ respective ‘fair shares’ of the necessary global mitigation effort. These principles are relied upon to reinforce the paramountcy of the need to achieve the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement to realize the rights of the youth-applicants. That various core principles of ECHR jurisprudence, including the margin of appreciation and the principle of effectiveness, support this view is further outlined. The chapter also outlines, with reference to the landmark Urgenda decision, how the approach taken by the youth-applicants in this case can reinforce the efforts of domestic climate change litigators in Europe and beyond.

There are important doctrinal and institutional obstacles in the way of proper treatment of collective legal responsibility of several States for global environmental harm, but no serious theoretical obstacles. Difficult theoretical issues do arise at the level of justification, however. The chapter investigates how legal and moral responsibility of individuals, States, and collectives of both all fit together as a normative matter, using global environmental harm as its case study. It argues that shared moral responsibility – the responsibility an individual has when acting together with others – is a very important moral phenomenon. By contrast we have no need for the idea of a collective (such as a State) itself being morally responsible. Ideally, the shared ex ante moral responsibilities of individuals together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be discharged by domestic law under the guidance of international law. Where non-complying States face sanctions, the burden of those sanctions will be imposed on individuals who are not responsible for their State’s failure. Yet citizens have political obligations to improve their States, including in the matter of compliance with international law. If the sanctions can be seen as doing citizens’ work for them, the burdens imposed do not seem objectionable.

This chapter explored the implications of sharing obligations for the determination of shared responsibility, underscoring the relevance of distinguishing between two types of shared obligations throughout this process. After all, the implications of sharing obligations for responsibility relations differ depending on whether the shared obligation breached is of a divisible or indivisible character. Where a breach of an indivisible shared obligation can only result in shared responsibility for a single wrongful act – which entails that the sharing of an obligation that is indivisible always has one inevitable implication for responsibility relations – a breach of a divisible shared obligation has no such automatic implications for the responsibility of states and international organizations concerned. Instead, when a divisible shared obligation is breached, different outcomes in terms of responsibility remain possible. Depending on the circumstances in which the divisible shared obligation is breached, a breach may give rise to shared responsibility for a single wrongful act, shared responsibility for multiple wrongful acts, or may even give rise to the responsibility of only one of the states or organizations that bear the obligation (though it should be noted that, in practice, breaches of divisible shared obligations are likely to occur by multiple duty-bearers).

This chapter discusses how pedagogically productive is the idea of invoking in classrooms feelings of collective guilt, and attempts to explore not only the persistence of ‘collective guilt’ in students’ responses, but also the new possibilities that are opened with reframing it as ‘shared responsibility’. In particular, the analysis addresses the moral, political and pedagogical implications of viewing the phenomena of collective guilt and shared responsibility through the lenses of Hannah Arendt and Iris Marion Young. Using Arendt’s and Young’s accounts of shared responsibility offers opportunities to educators and students to make them aware of their responsibilities as members of certain social groups, rather than getting stuck in feelings of guilt. The proposed pedagogy of shared responsibility is not focused on blame, guilt or fault, but rather it has the potential to minimize denials of complicity and instead encourage students to interrogate the conditions under which they are responsive and responsible to others.

This chapter examines how international courts have applied principles of state responsibility in the context of situations of shared responsibility between multiple parties, concluding that when this occurs international adjudication becomes less suited as a process for implementing such responsibility. Substantive law of international responsibility is slowly adjusting to its increasingly relational nature, but the procedures of international adjudication in many respects are not well suited for incorporating this relational nature. There are considerable differences between states, in terms of their willingness to submit themselves to adjudication of shared responsibility claims, even within “the west,” as a result of which responsibility will often will be shared between some states, but not all. The role of international adjudication in relation to shared responsibility differs widely – both between international courts and between states – in terms of the willingness of states to subject themselves, or make use of, international adjudication. An interesting example is the adjudication of claims related to extraordinary rendition. Whereas European states, like Macedonia and Poland, were found responsible by the European Court of Human Rights in relation to their (shared) responsibility, the USA has always resisted attempts to be subjected to adjudication for their leading role in extraordinary rendition.

There has been widespread support for the idea that the so-called international community has a remedial moral responsibility to protect vulnerable populations from mass atrocities when their own governments fail to do so. But, where exactly is this responsibility located?In other words, which body or bodies can be expected to discharge a duty to safeguard those who lack the protection of – or, indeed, come under threat from – their own government?The question becomes particularly pressing when the United Nations is unwilling or unable to act and there is no one state to fill the breach.

In this chapter, I examine ‘coalitions of the willing’ as one (likely provocative) answer to this question, and explore how the informal nature of such associations should inform the judgements of moral responsibility that we make in relation to them.Perhaps most controversially, I propose that, under certain circumstances, states and other institutional agents have a duty to contribute to forming such an ad hoc association, and then to participate in a collective endeavour – and that these circumstances may include cases of military intervention in response to mass atrocity without UN Security Council authorisation.

Thus chapter discusses the basics of international responsibility, focusing mostly on states. It details how states can be held responsible, what the consequences thereof may be, and discusses the circumstances precluding wrongfulness. It further analyzes the responsibility of international organizations and of individuals under international law

The research evidence is unmistakable: deep learning is most powerful, and often necessary, in social discourse. Learning in the presence of others allows us to understand the world as others see it, and to try on perspectives that we would not have known about otherwise. Learning with others is perilous, often leading to the hardening of beliefs and attitudes, and so the chapter also includes a discussion of how social discourse can be most productive, focusing on four facilitators: empathy, social capital, participatory forms of engagement and learning, and minimal power differentials and shared responsibility.

Chapter III explores the terms in which international human rights law governs the conduct of Executive Directors as member State representatives in international financial institutions and how their responsibility may ultimately be engaged in case of human rights violations. Inspired by rule of law requirements of legality, and the constitutional values of representation and responsiveness, the first part of the chapter examines how these elements have been incorporated in the human rights regime. The notion that member States have a due diligence duty to ensure that human rights are respected and protected throughout institutional operations is analysed in two particular instances, notably, in their role as participants in institutional decision-making, as well as creators of the organisation’s structure and operational framework. The final part of the Chapter examines how member States’ failure to act diligently brings about their international responsibility. It thus analyses the various elements that define the determination of wrongfulness, as well as the provision of remedies to victims. In so doing, it addresses questions such as that of standing, of causality, and the division of reparation duties among multiple member States and the international financial institution.