Friday, June 13, 2014

van den Herik & Duffy: Human Rights Bodies and International Humanitarian Law: Common But Differentiated Approaches

Larissa van den Herik (Leiden Univ. - Law) & Helen Duffy (Human Rights in Practice) have posted Human Rights Bodies and International Humanitarian Law: Common But Differentiated Approaches (in The Harmonisation of Human Rights Law, C. Buckley, P. Leach & A. Donald eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:
Human rights courts and bodies are increasingly called upon to look outwards, beyond the immediate contours of their constituent instruments and beyond their own jurisprudence. A key aspect of this phenomenon is the jurisprudential ‘borrowing’ or trans-judicial ‘dialogue’ between human rights courts, bodies and systems that is explored in detail in other chapters of this book. There is, however, also a growing call for such bodies to have regard to, interpret and in some cases ‘apply’ a range of other norms of international law beyond international human rights law (IHRL). UN imposed sanctions,2 the assertion of immunities of the state and state officials3 and issues of state responsibility4 are among the contexts in which human rights courts have recently had to grapple with generic international lawconcepts or rules from areas of law other than IHRL, often with controversial results. This chapter considers the approach of human rights courts and bodies to one such issue of interplay that arises with increasing frequency, namely the application of international humanitarian law (IHL) alongside IHRL in situations of armed conflict.