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Things Could Only Get Better: Al-Jedda beyond Behrami

Messineo, Francesco (2011) Things Could Only Get Better: Al-Jedda beyond Behrami. Military Law and the Law of War Review, 50 (3-4). pp. 321-346. ISSN 0556-7394. (KAR id:29863)

Abstract

In July 2011, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) held in Al-Jedda v. United Kingdom that the UK was responsible for the misconduct of its troops deployed as part of the UN-authorized Multinational Force in Iraq. Together with two other recent cases, Al-Saadoon and Al-Skeini, this may be the start of a trend in the ECtHR directed at clarifying and expanding the scope of the European Convention by partially overcoming two notorious sets of precedents: the Behrami jurisprudence on the attribution of conduct of military personnel involved in operations under UN auspices; and the particularly ambiguous Bankovi? jurisprudence on the extraterritorial scope of human rights protection. This article focuses on the Behrami side of Al-Jedda’s story: the question of attribution of conduct. Despite the attempts by the ECtHR to pay lip-service to Behrami by distinguishing it on the facts, the practical result of Al-Jedda is that Behrami should no longer be considered ‘good law’ when it comes to attribution of conduct during UN-authorized peace support operations. This is a major development, given that Behrami was almost universally criticised by legal commentators for being wrong both as a matter of law and as a matter of policy.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled keywords: Al-Jedda, Behrami, attribution of conduct, international responsibility, peacekeeping, peace support operations, European Court of Human Rights
Subjects: K Law
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > Kent Law School
Depositing User: Jenny Harmer
Date Deposited: 16 Jul 2012 08:33 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:07 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/29863 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Messineo, Francesco.

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