The causality principle is tied in with the rules of State Responsibility enunciated by the International Law Commission and Article 51 of the United Nations Charter which states that nothing in the Charter will impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. The provision goes on to say that measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense will be immediately reported to the Security Council and will not in any way affect the authority and responsibil-ity of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.
The International Law Commission has established that a crime against the peace and security of mankind entails individual responsibility, and is a crime of aggression.115
A further link drawing civil aviation to the realm of international
111Metz (2002).
112Becker (2006).
113Becker (2006, Chap. 2, p. 67).
114Becker (2006, p. 335).
115Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind, International Law Commis-
sion Report, 1996, Chapter II Article 2.
A. State Responsibility 51
peace and security lies in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal court, which de.nes a war crime, inter alia, as intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects; attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objects; employing weapons, projectiles, and material and methods of warfare that cause injury.116
The Statute also de.nes as a war crime, any act which is intentionally directed at buildings, material, medical units and transport, and personnel using the distinctive emblems of the Geneva Conventions in conformity with international law.117
V. The Role of Knowledge
Another method of determining State responsibility lies in the determination whether a State had actual or presumed knowledge of acts of its instrumentalities, agents or private parties which could have alerted the State to take preventive action. International responsibility of a State cannot be denied merely on the strength of the claim of that State to sovereignty. Although the Chicago Convention in Article 1 stipulates that the contracting States recognize that every State has complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory, the effect of this provision cannot be extended to apply to State immunity from responsibility to other States. Professor Huber in the Island of Palmas case118
was of the view:
Sovereignty in the relations between States signi.es independence. Independence in regard to a portion of the globe is the right to exercise therein, to the exclusion of any other State, the functions of a State...Territorial sovereignty...involves the exclusive right to display the activities of a State.119
Professor Huber’s de.nition, which is a simple statement of a State’s rights, has been quali.ed by Starke as the residuum of power which a State possesses within the con.nes of international law.120
Responsibility would devolve upon a State in whose territory an act of unlawful interference against civil aviation might occur, to other States that are threatened by such acts. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) recognised in the Corfu Channel Case:
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