ARSIWA

ARSIWA — the Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts — is the authoritative restatement of the secondary rules of state responsibility under international law. The text was adopted by the International Law Commission (ILC) in 2001 after roughly five decades of drafting under successive Special Rapporteurs (notably Roberto Ago, Willem Riphagen, Gaetano Arangio-Ruiz, and James Crawford). The UN General Assembly took note of the Articles in Resolution 56/83 (12 December 2001) and annexed them to that resolution; subsequent resolutions have repeatedly commended them to governments without converting them into a treaty.

ARSIWA does not create primary obligations (such as the prohibition on the use of force or rules on trade). Instead it sets out the secondary rules that apply once a primary obligation is breached. Key building blocks include:

• Article 2: an internationally wrongful act exists where conduct is attributable to a state and breaches an international obligation.
• Articles 4–11: rules of attribution, covering state organs, persons exercising governmental authority, and conduct directed or controlled by a state.
• Articles 20–27: circumstances precluding wrongfulness, including consent, self-defence, countermeasures, force majeure, distress, and necessity.
• Articles 28–39: legal consequences — cessation, assurances of non-repetition, and reparation in the forms of restitution, compensation, and satisfaction.
• Articles 40–41: consequences of serious breaches of peremptory norms (jus cogens).
• Articles 42–54: invocation of responsibility, including by injured states and, in limited cases, non-injured states, plus rules governing countermeasures.

Although not binding as a treaty, ARSIWA is routinely cited by the International Court of Justice, investment tribunals, and human rights bodies as reflecting customary international law. The ICJ relied on its provisions, for example, in Bosnia v. Serbia (2007) on attribution and in Gabčíkovo-Nagymaros (1997) on necessity and countermeasures.