Overlapping responsibility: the legal relationship between the international organization and the host state

This chapter focuses on the duty of care from the perspective of the legal relationship that the sending international organization establishes with the hosting State. This is a privileged perspective to investigate the plurality of legal regimes in which the duty of care is implemented. Indeed, the protection of international civilian personnel is at the intersection of international law, national law of the hosting/sending State and internal law of the organization. The aim is to enlighten a fundamental component of the broader obligation that international organizations have to protect the safety of their personnel deployed in international missions. In particular, this chapter focuses on the relationship that the sending organization has to establish with the hosting State in order to fulfil its duty of care. Moving between regimes and points of view, it builds on the fundamental principle under which hosting States bear the primary responsibility to protect civil servants deployed in their territories.