A/HRC/19/33 20. Where States are economically fully dependent on other States, economic measures may reach an intensity of coercive quality. At the same time, in order to be regarded as intervention the measures must be aimed at influencing the sovereign will of another State in an undue fashion.26 Thus, where unilateral coercive measures intend to induce compliance with international legal obligations, such as non-use of force or human rights, they are less likely to infringe the principle than when they are directed against the legitimate sovereign political decision-making of a State. (c) Customary human rights and international humanitarian law norms 21. Many of the human rights and international humanitarian law norms mentioned above are likely to constitute norms of customary international law. Fundamental humanitarian law provisions are widely regarded as customary international law. 27 Although the blanket qualification of human rights law in general as customary law has been more controversial,28 it appears that those basic provisions that are in issue in the case of economic embargoes do have a customary international law character. In addition, there may be strong and convincing arguments to consider core provisions of humanitarian law, as well as the most basic human rights, as having received the status of non-derogable, peremptory norms in the sense of jus cogens obligations.29 3. Potential preclusion of wrongfulness of coercive measures (a) Countermeasures 22. Under the customary international law principles of State responsibility as codified in the International Law Commission articles on State responsibility,30 otherwise unlawful acts may be exceptionally justified as countermeasures. 31 Countermeasures are permitted under certain restrictive circumstances: they may be taken only against a responsible State to induce it to comply with its obligations to cease the internationally wrongful conduct, if it is continuing.32 Where human rights or other obligations owed to the international community as a whole (obligations erga omnes) are concerned, any State may take lawful measures against the State that breached the said erga omnes obligation to ensure cessation 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 Cf. Derek Bowett, “Economic coercion and reprisals by States”, Virginia Journal of International Law, vol. 13, No. 1 (Fall 1972), p. 5 (“Measures not illegal per se may become illegal only upon proof of an improper motive or purpose.”). See International Court of Justice, Military and Paramilitary Activities (footnote 15 above), p. 113; Theodor Meron, Human Rights and Humanitarian Norms as Customary Law (Clarendon Press, 1989). See Louis Henkin, “Human Rights”, in Encyclopedia of Public International Law, vol. 2, Rudolf Bernhardt, ed., 2nd ed. (Amsterdam, Elsevier, 1995), p. 887. See also, however, the critical view by Bruno Simma and Philip Alston, “The sources of human rights law: custom, jus cogens, and general principles”, Australian Year Book of International Law, vol. 12 (1992), p. 90, suggesting general principles of law as a more adequate source of unwritten general international law. See the report of the International Law Commission on the work of its thirty-second session (Official Records of the General Assembly, Thirty-fifth Session, Supplement No. 10 (A/35/10), vol. II, part two, p. 46, stating that “some of the [rules of humanitarian law] are, in the opinion of the Commission, rules which impose obligations of jus cogens...”. See also Theodor Meron, “On a hierarchy of international human rights”, American Journal of International Law, vol. 80 (1986), p. 1. Draft articles on the responsibility of States for internationally wrongful acts, Official Records of the General Assembly, Fifty-sixth session, Supplement No. 10 (A/56/10), chap. IV, para. 76. Ibid., art. 22 on countermeasures in respect of an internationally wrongful act. Ibid., art. 49 on the object and limits of countermeasures. 7