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Property disputes between Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Croatia are a reality that burdens the entirety of international diplomatic relations between two neighboring countries of the same subregion. After the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), numerous issues arose, of which property rights are among the most important. The republics of the former SFRY, as well as natural and legal persons, had their property in the entire territory of Yugoslavia, so it was necessary to adequately protect the existing rights. In this regard, in 2001, the Successor States of the SFRY concluded the Agreement on Succession, in which they agreed on movable and immovable property through seven Annexes. Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) started from the view that the comprehensive implementation of the Succession Agreement is the basis of permanent, stable, and friendly relations between the Contracting States and took all that was necessary to return the property claimed by the Successor States. However, the Republic of Croatia did not return the property in the way that Bosnia and Herzegovina did, and the first country started to violate the aforementioned multilateral international agreement. Given that the Agreement on Succession does not offer adequate solutions for the peaceful settlement of international disputes between the Contracting Parties, the paper analyzes the possibility of settlement of said disputes based on investment arbitration, which as a model for the settlement of international disputes is not an instrument used by individuals and legal entities from BiH into a sufficient extent. Equally, in this light, we explore the legal possibilities of the concluded Agreement on the Promotion and Protection of Investments between Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republic of Croatia (bilateral investment treaty) and present the future of investment arbitration from the perspective of the European Union.

With the International Criminal Court (ICC) losing not only its chance of incorporating the same great powers that decided not to support it at the very start – out of fear of losing dominance – but also about to lose long-time members such as the ones from the African Union, its chances of being a mean of institutionalized punishment against the worst individual crimes of international concern are trembling. Would the ICC obtain better outcomes if it discarded entirely its authority against member governments, and restricted its jurisdiction to cases suggested by the same countries where the crimes had been allegedly committed? The ICC could hence maintain an important role in the canalization of local jurisdictions through common, global rules: this way, even if through selective jurisdiction, it could at least limit and moderate the intentions of member States when dealing with inconvenient local enemies or oppositions. Through an analysis of the jurisdictional past of this institution and a contextualization of its controversial relationship with the United Nations (UN) Security Council, this paper aims to furnish a comparison of available outcomes, and elucidate the aforementioned possibility as an advantageous framework, although less ambitious. An eventual last focus will be put on the risks of the opposite trend, an ambitious but inefficient institution, possibly leading to the legitimization of its failures.

The paper covers unlawful use of force in international law by states to explore the general concept and definition of aggression in the law of state responsibility and for criminal responsibility of individuals. The genesis of the concept of aggression in the XX century is analyzed. The paper describes problems that arose in defining the aggression that accompanied the efforts to ban any threat of force and the use of force by international law provisions, which was over with adopting the United Nations Charter in 1945. The responsibility of a State for the internationally wrongful act in question was accompanied by the criminal responsibility of individuals for the same international crime. The analysis of cases before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, and the analysis of the work of the United Nations Security Council, reveal their practice in terms of which of the above authorities has priority in finding State responsibility? Equally, we seek to identify the weaknesses concerning the definition of aggression adopted as an expression of political compromise in Annex to the 1974 UN General Assembly Resolution, and whether the 2010 Kampala definition contained in the amendments to the Rome Statute may be considered inadequate in trying of the International Criminal Court to fight impunity and to participate in the prevention of future crimes of aggression through its work and actions. Ultimately, is the aggression any threat or violation of international peace and security by the state? If aggression is a true-crime of a State, does that mean that only the highest officials of the state will be criminally responsible for the crime in question?

The first chapter of the paper elaborates the question of whether one of the constitutive elements of the internationally wrongful act and a precondition for responsibility could be embodied in an existence of damage that has to be inflicted upon participants with international legal personality. In this regards legal doctrine, the arbitral awards, international judgments as well as the works of the UN International Law Commission will be examined, particularly the Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts and the Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organisations from 2001 and 2011, respectively. An interesting question could be raised concerning the terms used in Law on Responsibility and that is whether there is a difference between damage, injury, and unlawful consequence. Punitive or penal damage and its application in Law on Responsibility will be further assessed. The author will begin its research with the definition of punitive damage, and will further take into consideration international legal doctrine, international arbitral awards, judicial decisions of international courts, decisions of various claims commissions as well as norms of general international law in supporting his hypothesis that international law does not entail reparations for punitive damages. One of the aims of this paper is to indicate the question of whether the existence of punitive damages in international law, if any, be linked to a legal nature of State and international organization responsibility, in the sense that application of punitive damages in international law would support the thesis on the very existence of criminal responsibility of the named subjects of international law? It is interesting to note that the criminal responsibility of states has been abandoned by the removal of Article 19 in the final Draft Articles on Responsibility of States.

The responsibility of states and international organizations is an essential issue of contemporary international law. All other debates in this branch of law seem to follow up on this issue.In fact, whenever a state violates its international obligation, the question of the responsibilityof such a state arises. However, in addition to being essential, this issue is also an extremelypolitically sensitive area, as only some states, guided mainly by demand for respect for theirterritorial sovereignty and the principle of equality of all states, are willing to accept all theconsequences of such behavior in international relations with other subjects of internationallaw, while those that consider themselves more equal than others (primus inter pares), particularly the great world powers, will be largely reluctant to accept legal responsibility for theirillegal acts, and especially for the commission of international crimes in the narrow sense,which includes the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime ofaggression. With international organizations, the problems in this regard are perhaps evengreater.In this paper we examine the meaning of further survival of the concept of criminal responsibility of states and international organizations, wanting to examine the concept and definitionof criminal responsibility of transnational corporations at the international level, while in thesecond part of the article we try to shed a light on political-legal responsibility. In addition tothe fact that this concept is probably unsustainable under international law, it seems that theapproach to advocating for the criminal responsibility of the state, as well as international organizations, is unnecessary. Therefore, we should work on building and thoroughly elaboratingthe concept of international responsibility of the state and the international organization inthe conditions of international crimes stricto sensu, in other words, serious breaches of obligations arising from peremptory norms of general international law. In this way, without creating legally unsustainable constructions, essentially the same goal would be achieved.