 The question I would like to address now is straightforward. What happens when international obligations are breached? That is when international law is not duly applied. In other words, what are, under international law, the legal consequences of internationally wrongful acts? Having such question is asking about the regime of international responsibility. Of course, responsibility is, first and foremost, a moral concept, but it is also a legal concept that it exists in various forms, from criminal responsibility to civil or torturous responsibility in every legal system. That the rules on responsibility have all in common is the fact that they come into play when the conduct of a legal subject does not conform with what is required from it under the law. In order to preserve the integrity of the legal order and to protect the victim of the breach, the breach is not left without legal consequences, those consequences being required under the rules on responsibility. In that sense, the rules on responsibility are set to constitute together secondary rules, which are triggered when obligations that are owed under primary rules, commanding certain conducts, are breached. The primary rules are the substantive obligations created through the various processes that we identified as the sources of international law. And the secondary rules on international responsibility are rules of customary international law that automatically apply in case an obligation under a primary rule is breached. Those customary rules have been codified and developed over the years by the International Law Commission. The ILC took about half a century to codify the customary rules relating to state responsibility and the United Nations General Assembly finally took note in 2001 of the draft articles prepared by the ILC. It is entitled Articles on State Responsibility for Internationally Wrongful Act and I'll often use the acronym ARSIWA to refer to them. The work of the ILC is essential in that regard and it is just impossible today to speak about international responsibility without referring to it. The articles were elaborated by the ILC on the basis of a careful digestion of state practice and they were adopted by the General Assembly without any opposition and without a vote. It is usually therefore considered that they reflect customary international law to a very large extent and furthermore since the adoption of the articles states and courts have referred to them and so they confirm their customary status. Those articles undoubtedly constitute today acceptable law on state responsibility and let me say a few words now about the intellectual and the conceptual foundation of the ILC work on international responsibility. To a large extent the articles on state responsibility conceptually stem from the work of Roberto Ago, an Italian scholar who had been one of the key special rapporteurs of the ILC on the topic of state responsibility and who later became judge at the International Court of Justice. Other special rapporteurs were involved in the work of the ILC on state responsibility and they all built from the conceptual foundations that was laid down by Ago. To name a few of those rapporteurs, notably William Riepagen, a Dutch jurist, Gaitaino Arangio Ruiz, another Italian scholar and finally James Crawford from Australia who was professor at Cambridge for many years and Crawford concluded the work of the ILC on the topic in 2001 and he was later elected at the ICJ in 2014. The conceptual breakthrough that was brought over by Roberto Ago and which resulted from earlier work dating from the 1930s under the influence of his master Dionisio Anzilotti, that breakthrough was to consider that there was one unified regime of responsibility in international law, that responsibility automatically stemmed from the commission of any internationally wrongful act and that all the consequences, all the legal consequences resulting from any wrongful act were forming part of the secondary rules on state responsibility. According to Roberto Ago, those legal consequences are of two different types and those are elaborated under the articles on state responsibility. On the one hand, any wrongful act triggers the substantial obligation to make good the injury resulting from it. In domestic law, this could be called the civil or tortuous side of responsibility. On the other hand, and because international law is a decentralized legal order, the commission of a wrongful act also gives rise to the possibility for the injured state to take certain measures, measures that are called countermeasures in order to protect itself from the wrongful act and to put pressure on the state that is responsible for it. In domestic law, this would rather correspond to the criminal, the sanctioning side of responsibility. But of course, this comparison is, as we shall see, not perfectly adequate. All those substantial and instrumental consequences are governed by the rules on state responsibility for internationally wrongful act. Article 1 of the articles on state responsibility, Arsiois, finally adopted by the General Assembly in 2001, this article 1 reflects the conceptual views of AGO and defines international responsibility as follows, and I quote, every internationally wrongful act of a state entails the international responsibility of that state, end of quote. In other words, what triggers international responsibility is the commission of an internationally wrongful act, end of a wrongful act only. There is no need that the internationally wrongful act results in an injury for responsibility to exist, and responsibility results from a behavior which is objectively contrary to an international obligation, irrespective of any fault being committed. Article 2 continues by stating the elements of an internationally wrongful act. It reads as follows, I quote, there is an internationally wrongful act of a state when conduct consisting of an action or a mission, A, is attributable to the state under international law and B, constitutes a breach of an international obligation of the state, end of quote. In other words, an internationally wrongful act is made of two elements, an objective element which is the fact that the conduct consisting of an action or a mission does not conform with the international obligation of the state and a subjective element which is the fact that such a conduct is legally attributable to the state under international law. Attribution, as we shall see, is a central issue in international responsibility because states are abstract entities and they only act through human beings. In the following sections, I'll respectively address the objective and subjective elements making together the internationally wrongful act triggering international responsibility. The articles on state responsibility deal first with attribution and then with wrongfulness but for the sake of convenience I'll reverse that order and I'll start with wrongfulness. In that regard, Article 3 of the articles on state responsibility states that I quote, the characterization of an act of a state as internationally wrongful is governed by international law. Such characterization is not affected by the characterization of the same act as lawful by internal law, end of quote. And this is fundamental and it reflects an axiomatic principle that you know already according to which a state cannot rely on its internal law in order to escape its international obligations. In a case between the United States of America and Italy, the International Court of Justice recalled that and I quote, compliance with municipal law and compliance with the provisions of a treaty are different questions. What is a breach of a treaty may be lawful in the municipal law and what is unlawful in the municipal law may be wholly innocent violation of a treaty provision, end of quote. Those three articles form together the general principles governing the law of state responsibility for internationally wrongful act. In substance, the same principles apply to the responsibility of international organizations when they commit internationally wrongful acts. The ILC has also codified the rules on international responsibility of international organizations and its work on this topic was conducted by another Italian scholar, Professor Giorgio Gaia, who was elected judge at the ICJ in 2011, just after the General Assembly also took note of the completed work of the ILC on the subject. Conceptually, the articles on responsibility of international organizations, or ARRIO to use another acronym, those articles very much resemble the articles on the responsibility of states, but in this course and due to a lack of time, I shall concentrate on the 2001 articles on the responsibility of states for internationally wrongful acts. In the next reading, we'll turn to the objective element of any internationally wrongful act that is the breach of an international obligation.