Particular treaty regimes, such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the European Convention on Human Rights, have established their own special rules of responsibility.
[6] The League's 1930 Codification Conference in The Hague was able to reach an agreement only on "secondary" issues such as imputation, not on substantive rules regarding the treatment of aliens and their property.
It took nearly 45 years, more than thirty reports, and extensive work by five Special Rapporteurs in order for the International Law Commission to reach agreement on the final text of the Draft Articles as a whole, with commentaries.
"[9] García Amador attempted to return to the traditional focus on responsibility for injury to aliens but his work was essentially abandoned by the ILC when his membership ended in 1961.
His successor, Roberto Ago of Italy, reconceptualised the ILC's work in terms of the distinction between primary and secondary rules, and also established the basic organisational structure of what would become the Draft Articles.
By focusing on general rules, stated at a high level of abstraction, Ago created a politically safe space within which the ILC could work and largely avoid the contentious debates of the day.
Willem Riphagen of the Netherlands, who served as special rapporteur to 1986, stressed that particular primary rules may specify the consequences of their breach - an idea conveyed by the articles through the recognition of lex specialis.
In 1995, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution in effect pressing the Commission to make progress on the state responsibility articles and other long-pending projects.
The final text of the Draft Articles was adopted by the ILC in August 2001, bringing to completion one of the Commission's longest running and most controversial studies.
This has become an increasingly significant contemporary issue, as non-state actors such as Al Qaeda, multinational corporations, and non-governmental organisations play greater international roles, and as governments privatise some traditional functions.
[17] Persons or entities not classified as organs of the State may still be imputable, when they are otherwise empowered to exercise elements of governmental authority, and act in that capacity in the particular instance.
[21] Despite their apparent concreteness, the standards stated in some rules involve important ambiguities, and their application will often require significant fact-finding and judgment.
Articles indirectly acknowledges in a savings clause also that states may owe secondary obligations to non-state actors such as individuals or international organisations.
This provision picks up on the ICJ's celebrated suggestion in Barcelona Traction that some obligations are owed erga omnes, toward the international community as a whole.