On the Non-Attribution of Bosnian Serbs' Conduct to Serbia

In the judgment concerning the Genocide Convention, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) holds that different tests could be applied in order to determine (i) the degree of a state’s involvement in an armed conflict on another state’s territory that is required for the conflict to be characterized as international and (ii) the degree of a state’s involvement that is required for that state to be held responsible for a specific act that occurred in the course of the conflict. This article discusses this holding. In particular, it analyses whether by excluding attribution to the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) of the acts of genocide committed by the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS), the ICJ has precluded the possibility of considering the 1992^1995 conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina as an international armed conflict