Chapter

Sources of international humanitarian law and international criminal law : specific features

Raphaël van Steenberghe

The Oxford handbook on the sources of international law

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2017

p. 891-911

English

Bibliographie : p. 911

This chapter analyses the specific features which characterize the sources of international humanitarian law (IHL) and international criminal law (ICL). It first examines those which are claimed to characterize IHL and ICL sources in relation to the secondary norms regulating the classical sources of international law. The chapter then looks at the specific features of some IHL and ICL sources in relation to the others of the same field. Attention is given particularly to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the impact of its features on other ICL sources, as well as to the commitments made by armed groups, whose characteristics make them difficult to classify under any of the classical sources of international law. In general, this chapter shows how all those specific features derive from the specific fundamental principles and evolving concerns of these two fields of international law.

• The Oxford handbook on the sources of international law / ed. by Samantha Besson and Jean d'Aspremont ; with the assistance of Sévrine Knuchel