Shared Responsibility v. Individual Responsibility: Search of Fairness and Multilateralism in the Implementation of International Responsibility

In international practice, there are situations when the result of joint activities of several States and international organizations is damage to a third party. Such precedents are characteristic of violations of the norms of the law of armed conflict, international humanitarian, environmental, and migration law. The question arises: who is responsible for joint activities and how should the responsibility for damage be distributed among multiple actors? The author formulates the issue on conformity of the individual responsibility practice, as well as the implementation of the principle of plurality of responsible states codified in the Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts to the principle of justice and full compensation for harm in situations and its relevance to the current stage of development of the law of international responsibility. The methodological basis of the research was made up of general scientific (analysis, synthesis, systematic approach) and private legal methods of cognition (formal legal, comparative legal). The legal nature of the responsibility of states for joint activities is investigated; its qualifying features are highlighted. The normative value of joint responsibility is substantiated, which consists in solving the problem of implementing responsibility in a situation of multiple attribution of behavior when causing indivisible damage to a third party. On the basis of a critical analysis of Articles on State Responsibility, Guidelines on Joint Responsibility, international judicial practice, the possibilities and limits of joint responsibility in resolving the noted problem and eliminating gaps in individual responsibility in situations of concerted actions in general are identified. The necessity of developing the key issue of the joint responsibility regime — criteria for the distribution of responsibility between multiple actors — is argued. In the absence of such criteria, the implementation of the abstract idea of shared responsibility potentially creates a new set of gaps in responsibility. A methodology for developing criteria for the distribution of joint responsibility is proposed.