Suchergebnisse

South Slavs have been repeatedly used as precedents for international humanitarian law and consequently have affected global developments: from the international concern over positions of Christians in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1870s that led to the peaceful replacement of imperial rule to the late 20th century in the NATO intervention against Serbia and Montenegro over Kosovo Albanians, which led to the creation of the newest nation-state in Europe. In addition to internal factors, the very creation of the common South Slav state was a result of international interventions, as was the dissolution of the country. The League of Nations ruling in favour of the Yugoslav complaint against Hungary in 1934 aided in developing the UN Security Council resolutions against Afghanistan in September 2001. Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995 was a precedent for the UN sanctioned intervention, while Kosovo was a precedent for the non-sanctioned American-led intervention. Afghanistan, East Timor, Iraq, Libya are all legal consequences of interventions in the Balkans. There- fore, local history of interventions can lead to a general understanding of the development of international humanitarian law. Adapted from the source document.

SummaryThis article argues that since the Tadić case before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, a new category of armed conflict has migrated from international criminal law to international humanitarian law: that of armed groups fighting each other within the borders of a state without the intervention of the armed forces of the latter. However, the extent to which the rules of this category of conflict cover issues that may arise in such a conflict has not been comprehensively examined. One may infer, from the war crimes that the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court criminalizes in this type of conflict, a dozen rules of international humanitarian law. After giving an historical account of the codification of this category of armed conflict, the author argues that there is a need to further develop these rules in order to provide a more comprehensive humanitarian law regime applicable to conflict exclusively between non-state armed groups. The absence of such a comprehensive regime should not, however, be taken as evidence of a legal vacuum. The author suggests that a law enforcement regime resting on international human rights law should be applied to relations between the armed groups and the territorial state, while the warring relationship between the armed groups should fall under the law of armed conflict, including those core customary rules that are now recognized as being equally applicable to international and non-international armed conflict.

AbstractThis paper examines whether the interpretation of Article 30 of Geneva Convention III that allows the use of solitary confinement for prisoners of war with psychosocial disabilities is still valid in light of the new standards of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It proposes two alternative interpretations of Article 30 to demonstrate why isolation based on disability is unlawful and concludes that the use of solitary confinement on prisoners of war with psychosocial disabilities should be prohibited.

In February 2014 the Taliban revealed the capture of a British military working dog in Afghanistan and posted a video of their captive on the internet. Taking this recent incident as a starting point, the contribution aims to evaluate some aspects relating to the issue of a possible incorporation of "animal soldiers" into the scope of application of international humanitarian law. For this purpose, the analysis proceeds in four main steps. In the first part, it is argued that international humanitarian law – although so far largely neglected in the respective discourses – is for a variety of reasons a particularly suitable research object from the perspective of a political theory of animal rights. Subsequently, a brief overview will be given of the current status – or rather non-status – of animals in the realm of the ius in bello. The third part addresses and discusses some of the chances resulting from as well as in particular also conceptual challenges arising in connection with a potential recognition of animals as international legal subjects having the status of combatants under the law of armed conflict. Finally, I sketch the probabilities of and possible conditions for a successful implementation of this approach in practice.