Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Biography of Hilaire McCoubrey
- Notes on contributors
- Foreword: There are men too gentle to live among wolves
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Hilaire McCoubrey and international conflict and security law
- 2 The development of operational law within Army Legal Services
- 3 Reflections on the relationship between the duty to educate in humanitarian law and the absence of a defence of mistake of law in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
- 4 Superior orders and the International Criminal Court
- 5 Command responsibility: victors' justice or just desserts?
- 6 The proposed new neutral protective emblem: a long-term solution to a long-standing problem
- 7 Towards the unification of international humanitarian law?
- 8 Of vanishing points and paradoxes: terrorism and international humanitarian law
- 9 What is a legitimate military target?
- 10 The application of the European Convention on Human Rights during an international armed conflict
- 11 Regional organizations and the promotion and protection of democracy as a contribution to international peace and security
- 12 Self-defence, Security Council authority and Iraq
- 13 International law and the suppression of maritime violence
- 14 Law, power and force in an unbalanced world
- Bibliography of Hilaire McCoubrey's work
- Index
7 - Towards the unification of international humanitarian law?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Biography of Hilaire McCoubrey
- Notes on contributors
- Foreword: There are men too gentle to live among wolves
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Hilaire McCoubrey and international conflict and security law
- 2 The development of operational law within Army Legal Services
- 3 Reflections on the relationship between the duty to educate in humanitarian law and the absence of a defence of mistake of law in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
- 4 Superior orders and the International Criminal Court
- 5 Command responsibility: victors' justice or just desserts?
- 6 The proposed new neutral protective emblem: a long-term solution to a long-standing problem
- 7 Towards the unification of international humanitarian law?
- 8 Of vanishing points and paradoxes: terrorism and international humanitarian law
- 9 What is a legitimate military target?
- 10 The application of the European Convention on Human Rights during an international armed conflict
- 11 Regional organizations and the promotion and protection of democracy as a contribution to international peace and security
- 12 Self-defence, Security Council authority and Iraq
- 13 International law and the suppression of maritime violence
- 14 Law, power and force in an unbalanced world
- Bibliography of Hilaire McCoubrey's work
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The international laws of war have traditionally been divided strictly between those applicable to international armed conflicts, and those which are, in contrast, applicable to non-international, or internal, armed conflicts. On 22 March 1996, however, the President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Antonio Cassese, sent a memorandum to the members of the Preparatory Committee for the Establishment of the International Criminal Court. The memorandum outlined the conclusions of the ICTY Appeals Chamber on this distinction, and asserted that:
since the 1930s, there has been a gradual blurring of the distinction between the customary international law rules governing international conflicts and those governing internal conflicts. Put another way, there has been a convergence of two bodies of international law with the result that internal strife is now governed to a large extent by the rules and principles which had traditionally only applied to international conflicts. … [R]egarding the formation of customary international law rules to protect those who are not taking part in the hostilities, … this convergence has come about due largely to the following four factors: (1) the increase in the number of civil conflicts; (2) the increase in the level of cruelty of internal conflicts; (3) the increasing interdependence of States; and, (4) the influence of universal human rights standards. The Appeals Chamber then turned to the extension of the rules regarding methods and means of warfare to internal armed conflicts and concluded that a similar blurring had occurred. In short, … certain norms apply as customary international law to internal and international armed conflicts alike.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- International Conflict and Security LawEssays in Memory of Hilaire McCoubrey, pp. 108 - 128Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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