"Preface" [2013] ELECD 312; in Kolb, Robert; Gaggioli, Gloria (eds), "Research Handbook on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013) x

Book Title: Research Handbook on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law

Editor(s): Kolb, Robert; Gaggioli, Gloria

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849800358

Section Title: Preface

Number of pages: 2

Extract:

Preface


The present Handbook deals with an eminently topical and important subject-matter,
namely the interplay between International Human Rights Law (HRL) and International
Humanitarian Law (IHL). This turbulent subject-matter has been of increasing import-
ance since the days of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of 1948 and the
Geneva Conventions of 1949. At the beginning, it was the issues of non-international
armed conflicts and the protection of civilians under Geneva Convention IV that
provided fruitful avenues for interplay and interaction. Later, occupied territories
entered the scene, especially when prolonged occupations took place, from 1967.
Today, the manifold grey areas opened by (armed) conflicts of different types, the
interplay between the conduct of hostilities and the maintenance of order in the
interstices of applicable legal regimes, the issues of jus post bellum (including
occupation law), the mandates of the UN Security Council playing on both legal
grounds, and also the evolving missions of modern armies, which are not any more
confined to simple combat missions (`conduct of hostilities') ­ all these considerations
imply new reflections on the mutual impact of each of these bodies of public
international law. To what extent can they cooperate without accidents and tensions? To
what extent does one prevail over the other? By what means does one induce legal
developments in the other? How can one provide mechanisms of implementation for
the benefit of the other without endangering the integrity of each? How far can one
contribute to a better understanding and interpretation ...