Writ of summons - Van Diepen Van der Kroef

of the Netherlands concluded no agreements with the UN, paid insufficient attention tothe instruction given to Dutchbat on the obligation to report war crimes and neglected tocreate supervisory mechanisms, or at least to enforce such mechanisms.374. It may already be deduced from the fact that the war crimes described above and towhich Dutchbat was witness were not reported that the instruction given to Dutchbatregarding the reporting of war crimes was inadequate. An adequate course of instructionwould have ensured by definition that such crimes were reported. Many Dutchbatsoldiers received inadequate or even no lessons in the laws of war (see, page 2656 of theNIOD Report). Another explanation for the non-reporting of observed war crimes isgiven in the Report of the French Parliament. That Report concludes that Dutchbatconsciously made no reports on war crimes in the light of the safety of the Dutchbatsoldiers who were being held by the Bosnian Serbs. In both cases the non-reporting ofwar crimes must be attributed to the State of the Netherlands as the obligation to ensurethat the Geneva Conventions were observed was not fulfilled.375. The above means that for the reasons there enumerated the State of the Netherlands isresponsible, in addition to the UN, for a breach of international humanitarian law duringthe deployment of Dutchbat. That such breaches (that are naturally also significant in theframework of the review of the ILC Articles and the fact that there is a question ofconduct contrary to that which properly pertains in social intercourse) did occur isaddressed below.II.5.c. Breach of international law376. Plaintiff has addressed above the attribution to the UN and the State of the Netherlands.For responsibility to attach – both where the the responsibility of a state and where theresponsibility of an international organisation is concerned – a breach of internationallaw is required. Article 12 of the ILC Articles for States states:‘There is a breach of an international obligation by a State when an act of that State isnot in conformity with what is required of it by that obligation, regardless of its originor character.’© Van Diepen Van der Kroef Advocaten 2007www.vandiepen.com158