Attribution of Conduct in International Military Operations: A Causal Analysis of Effective Control

While effective control, as formulated in art 7 of the International Law Commission Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations, has become recognised as the key criterion to attribute conduct in international military operations carried out under the lead of an international organisation, its precise contours remain elusive when applied to concrete scenarios. This article argues that attribution of conduct under the test of effective control can be analysed in causal terms and that such analysis is useful to attribute the conduct of military organs over which control is shared between contributing states and international organisations. In this interpretation, effective control is understood as a causally proximate form of control over a given conduct. Applied to the military context, the analysis clarifies how different forms of military control are relevant to different types of harmful conduct and how they translate in terms of legal control for the purpose of attribution. The article submits that, beyond operational control, control exercised at the organic or strategic levels can also be linked to certain types of harmful conduct, which provides conceptual grounds for attribution of conduct in complex military scenarios.