Human Rights in Armed Conflicts

Abstract

The Law of Human Rights, a part of Public International Law, is a set of norms enabling every human being the possibility of existence and of acting in a way corresponding to his/her inherent and inalienable dignity as a member of the human family, through granting that human being the right to make use of certain material or intellectual goods or values, the freedom of behaving in a certain way, or through forbidding certain acts by one human being against another.

International Humanitarian Law, also called the Law of Human Righst was, is a set of rules aimed at humanization of armed conflicts through establishing the protection of victims of war, enacting such rules of conduct of hostilities which would minimize losses and sufferings of civilians and combatants and the destruction of civilian objects, as well as through prohibiting or limiting the use of certain weapons.

The Law of Human Rights, established and developed within the United Nations system, has

been influenced by the „philosophy of peace” of that system under which the Organization, established to maintain international peace and security, has refused to deal with legal regulations of armed conflicts. It cannot protect human beings against violations of their human rights because it is not adapted to war situations and because the system of its execution is of a purely political character.

International Humanitarian Law, although not using the term „human rights”, aims at protecting these rights in time of an armed coflict, both international and non-international. On the one hand it provides for a system of execution of its provisions, on the other the protection granted by it to human beings is in many cases greater than that granted by the Law of Human Rights.

It does not mean that human beings lose their human rights with the outbreak of hostilities, but that these rights may be protected properly only under International Humanitarian Law.

The connection of these two separate systems into a common one, or the subordinating of one of them to the other one, is not possible and not advisable. It is indispensable to always bear in mind the interdependence of these two systems.