 We must now address a more controversial issue, and it is dealt with under article 8 of Arséloi, which is entitled Conduct Directed or Controlled by a State. The question is to know to what extent and on what basis can a state be held responsible for the conduct of persons that it sponsors and helps abroad. You may think at different situations where a government exerts influence abroad by supporting local groups that are sometimes engaged in violent political action or even in terrorism. Of course, the mere fact of helping or funding those groups in a foreign country is usually constitutive of a prohibited interference in the domestic affairs of another state or also of other wrongful acts, the sponsoring state being responsible for its own conduct. But the question goes further. Is it possible to consider that the wrongful acts that are materially committed by the local group be considered from a legal point of view as attributable to the sponsoring state? The answer to that question depends on the nature and the extent of the influence of the sponsoring state over the group, or rather, to put it more precisely in the words of the ILC, it depends on the existence of the real link between the person or group performing the act and the state machinery. A first situation needs to be distinguished. It is when the group acts upon the instruction of the sponsoring state. In such a case, there is no doubt that the state is responsible for the wrongful act committed by the individuals which have been specifically instructed by it to act in a certain way. In such a case, the individuals are undoubtedly acting on behalf of the state because of such instructions. And this is reflected in article 8 of Arsiois, I quote, The conduct of a person or group of persons shall be considered an act of a state under international law if the persons, if the person or group of persons is in fact acting on the instruction of or under the direction or control of that state in carrying out the conduct. However, most of the time it will be impossible to prove such instructions because of the secret character of the involvement of the foreign state. Therefore, the question will arise whether the direction or control by the foreign state over the individuals could result in their conduct being attributed to that state. Article 8 also deals with such direction or control, however the degree and nature of the control by the state over the conduct of the individuals or group has been controversial. In the early 1980s, the Sandinista government of Nicaragua was viewed by the U.S. government as a dangerous communist regime in Central America and it was the time of the Cold War and as usual response then the administration of President Reagan decided to fund and to train an armed movement opposed to the government in Managua, that movement being called the Contras. Nicaragua brought a case against the United States at the International Court of Justice. In 1984 the court ruled that it had jurisdiction to hear the case and two years later in 1986 the court ruled on the merits and found the United States to be internationally responsible for several serious breaches of international law. The ruling was a serious blow to the foreign policy of the U.S. However, the court rejected Nicaragua's claim according to which the U.S. should also be held responsible for all the killings and the attacks by the Contras in violation of international humanitarian law. The court found that the wrongful acts of the Contras were not attributable to the United States because Nicaragua had not established that the U.S., I quote, had effective control of the military or paramilitary operations in the course of which the alleged violations were committed. The court ruled that it was not sufficient that the U.S. administration was funding and training the Contras for their conduct to be attributed to the U.S. A general situation of dependence and support was not enough, further proof was needed, the proof that in the various instances they acted the Contras were actually acting on behalf of the U.S. because the U.S. had effective control over them when they acted or that the U.S. directed their conduct. Discharging such a proof is of course a very difficult, if not almost impossible task due to the usual secrecy surrounding the involvement of a foreign state. And a few years later, in 1999, Mr. Tajic, a Bosnian Serb, was facing trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Some of the charges against him related to certain war crimes that only exist in the context of an international armed conflict. And in order to justify that there had been such a conflict and that Mr. Tajic had been rightly charged with those crimes, the tribunal considered that the acts of the Bosnian Serbs were attributable to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, later known as Serbia and Montenegro, concluding therefore that a war had indeed existed between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Bosnia Herzegovina. This path of reasoning was not absolutely necessary, but it was the way chosen by the tribunal which allowed it to criticize the Nicaragua judgement of the ICJ. The tribunal said that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia could be held responsible for the crimes committed by the Bosnian Serbs because the government in Belgrade exercised overall control over the Bosnian Serbs. The tribunal held that the mere financing and equipping was not enough to establish overall control and that some participation of Serbia in the planning and supervision of the military operations by the Bosnian Serbs was needed, but that there was no need to prove that Serbia directed the Bosnian Serbs to commit certain crimes, nor that those crimes were carried out under the effective control of Serbia. It was sufficient to establish that Serbia exercised overall control over the Bosnian Serbs for Serbia to be responsible for their conduct. And those clearly diverging views of the ICJ and of the ICTY on the legal criteria for attribution of private acts to states fuelled the legal debate and scholars spoke about the fragmentation of international law. In 2001, when the ILC finalized the articles on state responsibility, it opted for a careful drafting, which became article 8 and in which the nature or degree of control is not qualified. In 2007, in a case already mentioned in this course, the International Court of Justice ruled on the responsibility of Serbia, the state for the genocide committed at Srebrenica by the Bosnian Serbs. Bosnia as a Govinda claimed that the acts of the Bosnian Serbs were attributable to Serbia as the ICTY had ruled, but the court disagreed and rejected the overall control test put forward by the ICTY, upholding the effective control test of the Nicaragua case. It is worth paying attention to the reasoning of the court on that issue and please turn now to the next reading for that purpose.