The public defence of the doctoral thesis of David Nauta, “The International Responsibility of NATO and its Personnel during Military Operations”, will take place on Wednesday 21 December 2016, 12:30 hrs, at the Aula of the Radboud University (Comeniuslaan 6, Nijmegen).
In 1999, the Alliance mistakenly bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Around the same period, allegations were made that NATO military personnel were involved in human trafficking and forced prostitution in Bosnia-Herzegovina. A decade later, NATO airplanes hit a fuel truck causing significant civilian casualties in Kunduz, Afghanistan and alleged indiscriminate attacks were conducted on a village in Chora with unobserved artillery strikes in 2007.
After more than 60 years of existence and a track-record of more than 30 missions performed worldwide, it is surprising that there is still uncertainty on the scope and content of NATO’s responsibility for wrongful conduct during its military operations.
This research provides an in-depth analysis of NATO’s institutional and legal framework, and is intended to complement existing research on the responsibility of international organizations for military operations.
This timely book deals with the international responsibility of NATO and its personnel during military operations. It examines, from a historic and institutional perspective, the status of the Alliance; whether it meets the indicia of an international organisation with its own international legal personality, or whether the Alliance is a mere confederacy of like-minded States. It investigates the existence of any existing international obligations under international conventional law and customary law and analyses the conditions by which violations of these obligations can be attributed to the Alliance. Finally, the responsibility of NATO for international crimes is examined.