Relevance of articles on responsibility of states for internationally wrongful acts for legal defense in WTO dispute settlement mechanism

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The article deals with the problem of reference of the parties of the dispute considered by the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) to the Draft articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ILC Articles) adopted by the International Law Commission in 2001 (ILC) in the process of dispute resolution. Such issues as the legal status of ILC Articles, the definition of international responsibility and internationally wrongful act as the ground of international responsibility are examined. The authors make a conclusion that customary rules regarding responsibility of the states for internationally wrongful acts are codified in ILC Articles. At the same time, ILC Articles contain several norms which constitute a progressive development and only in future can become the legally binding provision. Another conclusion made by the authors is that international responsibility and coercive measures, such as sanctions and countermeasures are different notions related to different legal institutions, although closely related to each other. The international responsibility can be enforced without application of such coercive measures. International responsibility relations are based on the existence of internationally wrongful act, despite of such legal consequences as application (or non-application) of coercive measures. Authors highlight that there is a wide practice of application of ILC Articles with the purpose of interpretation of the provisions of the WTO Agreements. The co-relation of the norms of the WTO Agreements and ILC Articles is examined in more details by the example of Articles 20 and 45 of ILC Articles. The recent case Peru – Additional Import Duty on Imports of Certain Agricultural Products, where Guatemala is the applicant is analyzed in the present article. The authors make a conclusion that article 20 of ILC Articles shall not be viewed as a provision used with the purpose of interpretation of article 4.2 of the Agreement on Agriculture, rather as a remedy applied under general international law.

About the authors: Dar'ya Boklan – Candidate of Science (Ph. D.) in Law, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, National Research University – Higher School of Economics; Olga Boklan – Postgraduate student, International Law Department, Russian Foreign Trade Academy; Anait Smbatyan – Doctor of Science in Law, Senior expert, “WTO Expertise Center”.

Citation: Boklan D., Boklan O., Smbatyan A. (2016) Znachenie Statey ob otvetstvennosti gosudarstv za mezhdunarodno-protivopravnye deyaniya dlya pravovoy zashchity interesov storon pri razreshenii sporov v ramkakh WTO [Relevance of articles on responsibility of states for internationally wrongful acts of 2001 for legal defense in WTO dispute settlement mechanism]. Mezhdunarodnoe pravosudie, no. 4. pp. 99–113. (In Russian).

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