State responsibility is at the heart of international human rights law. With respect to the right to life, the focus is on accountability for severe ill-treatment or a negligent or wilful failure to protect life against specific threats. But while responsibility for arbitrary deprivation of life by State agents remains central, also increasingly demanding of attention is compliance with the duty to fulfil the right to life, by reducing poverty, alleviating hunger, malnutrition, and disease, lowering the rate of accidents, and tackling pollution and climate change. Failure to do so may sustain alleged violations of the right to life and ground the responsibility of culpable States.