SAVICKIS AND OTHERS v. LATVIA JUDGMENT B. State responsibility 77. The International Law Commission adopted the Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (the ILC Articles) at its 53rd session, in 2001 (Official Records of the General Assembly, Fifty-sixth Session, Supplement No. 10 and corrigendum (A/56/10 and Corr.1)). They were submitted to the General Assembly which, in its resolution of 12 December 2001 (A/56/83 (2001)), took note of these articles and commended them to the attention of Governments. Article 2, entitled “Elements of an internationally wrongful act of a State”, provides: “There is an internationally wrongful act of a State when conduct consisting of an action or omission: (a) is attributable to the State under international law; and (b) constitutes a breach of an international obligation of the State.” 78. The Commentary, adopted together with the ILC Articles, further explains in relation to Article 2 (footnotes omitted): “(5) For particular conduct to be characterized as an internationally wrongful act, it must first be attributable to the State. The State is a real organized entity, a legal person with full authority to act under international law. But to recognize this is not to deny the elementary fact that the State cannot act of itself. An “act of the State” must involve some action or omission by a human being or group: “States can act only by and through their agents and representatives.” The question is which persons should be considered as acting on behalf of the State, i.e. what constitutes an “act of the State” for the purposes of State responsibility. (6) In speaking of attribution to the State what is meant is the State as a subject of international law. Under many legal systems, the State organs consist of different legal persons (ministries or other legal entities), which are regarded as having distinct rights and obligations for which they alone can be sued and are responsible. For the purposes of the international law of State responsibility the position is different. The State is treated as a unity, consistent with its recognition as a single legal person in international law. In this as in other respects the attribution of conduct to the State is necessarily a normative operation. What is crucial is that a given event is sufficiently connected to conduct (whether an act or omission) which is attributable to the State under one or other of the rules set out in chapter II. (7) The second condition for the existence of an internationally wrongful act of the State is that the conduct attributable to the State should constitute a breach of an international obligation of that State ... (12) In subparagraph (a), the term “attribution” is used to denote the operation of attaching a given action or omission to a State. In international practice and judicial decisions, the term “imputation” is also used. But the term “attribution” avoids any suggestion that the legal process of connecting conduct to the State is a fiction, or that the conduct in question is “really” that of someone else. (13) In subparagraph (b), reference is made to the breach of an international obligation rather than a rule or a norm of international law. What matters for these purposes is not simply the existence of a rule but its application in the specific case to the responsible State. The term “obligation” is commonly used in international judicial 26