Article

Unexpected challenges : the increasingly evident disadvantage of considering international humanitarian law in isolation

Louise Doswald-Beck

• Santa Clara journal of international law, Vol. 11, issue 1, 2012, p. 1-27

English

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In this article the author addresses what she considers are the most pressing challenges facing international humanitarian law. The first issue is the trend of IHL being misused to justify killings which are of dubious legality under the law relating to the use of inter-State force. The second issue is the fact that recent findings by human rights procedures have illustrated that a culture of human rights violations leads to serious humanitarian law violations. The two topics have one point in common: the non-respect of other branches of international law can, and increasingly does, have a direct negative effect on a genuine respect for the purpose and spirit of IHL.

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