This chapter explores the role of customary norms, general principles of international law, and jus cogens in forming human rights law. It discusses the importance and challenges of integrating noncodified sources into the human rights framework. The chapter examines how customary international law and general principles of law contribute to the development and application of human rights norms. It also discusses the concept of jus cogens and its role in establishing fundamental human rights norms that cannot be derogated. The chapter highlights the challenges in identifying and applying noncodified sources of human rights law and the need for a comprehensive approach to integrate these sources into the human rights framework.

It is generally accepted that bodies corporate are, at the least, partial subjects of international law and enjoy a measure of international legal personality when they are party to an armed conflict, as that notion is understood by international humanitarian law. It is further unquestioned that the members of a private corporation may be held individually responsible under international criminal law for international crimes they have committed in the course of their work. This was made clear in judgments in the Nuremberg Military Tribunals that followed the end of the Second World War. Bodies corporate are also bound by jus cogens human rights norms, including the prohibition on arbitrary deprivation of life and on enforced disappearance.

International organisations are subjects of international law with international personality. They are constrained by customary international law to respect and protect life. In addition, the European Union is a party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. A range of conduct will violate the right to life and thereby constitute an internationally wrongful act. Examples include the most flagrant instances of arbitrary deprivation of life: deliberate extrajudicial executions and other arbitrary killings by agents of an international organisation that often uses force, such as by NATO in its operations, or by UN Police or a UN peacekeeping operation. This is so whether the killings occur in peacetime or during and in connection with a situation of armed conflict.

There is increasing acceptance that both prescriptive jurisdiction and the application of customary law can serve to bind entities other than States or international organisations. A third approach is to consider de facto authorities – those that do not represent a recognised State but which exercise effective control over a significant populace – as having some of the human rights obligations incumbent on States. At the least, armed groups are bound by jus cogens human rights norms, including the prohibition on arbitrary deprivation of life and on enforced disappearance.

Under international law, individual responsibility exists for violation of jus cogens norms, which include arbitrary deprivation of life, resulting from acts or omissions. Peremptory norms of international law are binding not only on all States, corporations, armed groups, and organisations, but also on individuals. As the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic declared in 2012: ‘at a minimum, human rights obligations constituting peremptory international law (ius cogens) bind States, individuals and non-State collective entities, including armed groups’. While the most obvious route for realising individual responsibility for a violation of the right to life is through the criminal law – domestic or international – there are also civil remedies available in certain States. This is most notably the case in the United States (US), based on the Alien Tort Statute of 1789 or actions under Section 1983 of the US Code.

Although there has been little discussion of the issue in academic literature, at the least, NGOs are bound by jus cogens human rights norms, including the prohibition on arbitrary deprivation of life and on enforced disappearance. An NGO is not, however, formally defined under international law.