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11 Neth. Q. Hum. Rts. 521 (1993)
Part D: Documentation

handle is hein.journals/nethqur26 and id is 529 raw text is: Part D: Documentation Book Review* Menno T. Kanuninga, Inter-State Accountability for Violations of Human Rights, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1992, 217 pages, ISBN 0-8122-3176-7, $ 32,95 In his dissertation at the University of Leiden Menno T. Kamminga dealt with one of the most difficult and controversial questions of human rights law: the antagonistic relationship between the international protection of human rights and the principle of non-intervention into internal affairs of sovereign States. Kamminga mastered this task in a very thorough, methodologically sound and convincing manner. He successfully challenged the classic dogma of international law that States are entitled to exercise diplomatic protection only on behalf of their own nationals. After carefully analyzing State practice of formal diplomatic intercessions at a bilateral level as well as accountability toward the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations he arrives at the central conclusion that, under general international law, a State bound by certain international obligations in the field of human rights is entitled to require another State bound by those obligations - both under treaty based and customary international law - to perform them. Consequently, States are entitled to exercise full diplomatic protection on behalf of all victims of breaches of international human rights obligations, i.e. also on behalf of nationals of the offending State. In other words: under present international law the domestic jurisdiction clause in Article 2(7) of the UN Charter is no longer a valid ground for the offending State to object to bilateral diplomatic action by an interceding State of to multilateral action by intergovernmental bodies. This not only holds true for gross and systematic violations of human rights or those amounting to a threat to international peace and security but to every alleged breach of an international human rights obligation. If such obligation derives from treaty law, the offending State is accountable to all other States parties, if it is based on customary international law (e.g. the prohibition of genocide, slavery, arbitrary executions and disappearances, torture, prolonged arbitrary detention, apartheid and other forms of systematic racial discrimination as well as a consistent pattern of gross human rights violations), the accountability applies to all other States. In this respect Kamminga follows the opinion of the International Law Commission that erga omnes obligations in the field of human rights are not limited to rules ofjus cogens and to international crimes. Interceding States, therefore, have locus standi, without having to demonstrate any special interest, to lodge an inter-State application under a relevant treaty provision or to submit the case to the International Court of Justice under any of the explicit provisions of human rights treaties or, unless clearly prohibited by a treaty provision, under Article 36 (2) of its Statute. Kamminga arrives at these conclusions by carefully analyzing and combining contemporary theories of international law and the development of State practice. He begins with the analysis of some historical and contemporary cases of bilateral diplomatic intercessions on behalf of foreign nationals. This first part seems to be the least convincing since the few contemporary cases selected (Ali Bhutto, Kim Dae-jung, Orton and Vera Chirwa, Andrei Sakharov) represent diplomatic action on humanitarian grounds rather than intercessions aimed at holding an offending State accountable for human rights violations. * Manfred Nowak 521

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