Public International Law Q & A

1) Are individuals today subjects of International Law?

Altough States are the principal legal person within the international legal system, nowadays individuals are also subjects of International Law. A subject of the law is an entity capable of possessing international rights and duties and having the capacity to maintain its right by bringing international claims. Therefore, international legal personality may entitle a subject of international law to bring legal claims to enforce international legal rights, have the power to make interantional agreements, enjoy various immunities and privileges and be under certain interantional legal obligations.

The traditional position consider that States already act on behalf of their nationals, consequently, it was thought that individuals did not possess direct international legal rights and obligations. However the traditional position is no longer accurate.

Individuals have duties as a matter of international law. These obligations have been restricted to the criminal sphere. The notion of individual criminal responsibility was first applied by the International Military Tribunal at Nurember in 1946. The concept of individual criminal responsibiliity was developed and applied by the UN Security Council on an ad hoc basis when it estalished the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia.

Now it is accepted that individuals have rights at the elvel of itnernational law. However, these rights are dependent on particular States ahving fiven their consent to teh rights in question. So individuals may have indirect international legal rights. Further, wheter that right can be enforced depends on the institutional machinery and procedures wich accompany the right in question.

In certain regional systems, individuals have the right to make legal claims such as in the European COurt of Human Rights or in the Inter-American Court on Human Rights.