The decision of the International Review of the Red Cross to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is both understandable and commendable, given the Review's mission to promote and strive for observance of international humanitarian law during armed conflicts and the increasing convergence of that law with human rights law — as evidenced by the gradual substitution of the term “international humanitarian law” for the term “the law of war”.

Fifty years ago … on 10 December 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations solemnly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This event was a turning point in the development of international law. The individual human being, whose rights had been established over the long evolution of constitutional history, was now recognized as a central point of reference within the international legal system.

Today there can no longer be any doubt: international humanitarian law and international human rights law are near relations. This oft-repeated observation must now be accepted by all. Many believe that the close relationship between these two areas existed and was perceived “from the outset”. That is not at all the case. Formerly assigned to separate legal categories, it was only under the persistent scrutiny of modern analysts that they revealed the common attributes which would seem to promise many fruitful exchanges in the future. Let us try to clarify the situation.

The development in the last 50 years of the principles that comprise human rights law has had a major impact on international humanitarian law and indeed on international law generally. In more recent years, the movement for recognition of the equal rights of women has been exerting its own influence on human rights law and to some effect. In 1979, for example, the international community adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), to which 155 States are now party. Consideration is currently being given to the adoption of an Optional Protocol that will allow for individual and group complaints to be brought before the CEDAW Committee. Governmental and non-governmental organizations have increasingly focused on women's human rights. As a result, a wide range of studies, reports and recommendations on various aspects of the issue is available. The topic of women is thus firmly established on the international human rights agenda.

Over the past fifty years, the struggle against torture has become a central concern of human rights law. The first international legal text specifically outlawing “torture” was the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 5). The first treaty prohibiting torture — the European Convention on human rights (Article 3) — was adopted soon afterwards, in 1950. In 1984, the United Nations Convention against torture became the first binding international instrument exclusively dedicated to the struggle against one of the most serious and pervasive human rights violations of our time.

In 1948, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, human rights and humanitarian law were treated as separate fields. Since the 1968 Tehran International Conference on Human Rights, the situation has changed dramatically and the two subjects are now considered as different branches of the same discipline. A number of factors have contributed to this merger, including the growing significance of international criminal law and the criminalization of serious violations of human rights. This is the theme of the present comment.

Many States have in the course of their history faced internal tension and strife, sometimes so serious as to threaten their fundamental interests. These situations, characterized as they are by acts of revolt and violence committed by more or less organized groups fighting either the authorities or amongst themselves, are distinct from those termed non-international armed conflicts, in which the violence is more intense. In order to bring these internal confrontations to an end and restore order, the authorities frequently make massive use of police force or even the armed forces. The inevitable result is a weakening of the rule of law, marked by serious, large-scale human rights violations causing widespread suffering among the population.

This past April the Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons, Francis M. Deng, presented to the UN Commission on Human Rights, at its 54th session, a report with an addendum entitled Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (hereinafter “Guiding Principles”). The Commission adopted by consensus a resolution co-sponsored by more than 50 States which, inter alia, took note of the decision of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee welcoming the Guiding Principles and encouraging its members to share them with their Executive Boards, and also of Mr. Deng's stated intention to make use of these principles in his dialogue with governments and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations. These principles are an important milestone in the process of establishing a generally accepted normative framework for the protection of the estimated 20 to 25 million internally displaced persons worldwide.

The very intense international debate that has taken place in recent years on the subject of internally displaced persons has recently undergone a major development — the drafting of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (hereinafter referred to as the “Guiding Principles”). The distinguishing feature of these Guiding Principles is that they incorporate elements of three branches of public international law in a single document: international humanitarian law, human rights law, and refugee law. This combination calls for special comment.

UN human rights mechanisms continue to proliferate, producing numerous decisions and voluminous reports. This article reviews the ways in which such mechanisms apply international humanitarian law, including the law of Geneva and the law of The Hague. In doing so, it focuses mainly on the practice of the rapporteurs appointed by the UN Commission on Human Rights to investigate the human rights situations in specific countries and on that of the thematic rapporteurs and working groups which the Commission has entrusted with monitoring specific types of serious human rights violations wherever they occur, in particular the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions and the Representative of the Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons, whose mandates most often lead them to examine abuses occurring in the context of armed conflicts. Reference is also made to two innovative mechanisms which functioned in El Salvador: the first UN-sponsored “truth commission” and the first human rights monitoring body established as part of a comprehensive mechanism for monitoring compliance with a UN-sponsored peace agreement. Certain observations made by treaty monitoring bodies are also mentioned.

On 30 October 1997, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (hereafter the Commission) adopted its report in the so-called Tablada case. The case concerned an attack launched by 42 armed persons on military barracks of the national armed forces in 1989 at La Tablada, Argentina. The attack precipitated a battle lasting approximately 30 hours and resulting in the deaths of 29 of the attackers and several State agents. The surviving attackers filed a complaint with the Commission alleging violations by State agents of the American Convention on Human Rights (hereafter the American Convention) and of rules of international humanitarian law. In its report the Commission examined in detail whether it was competent to apply international humanitarian law directly. It answered this question in the affirmative.

The ever-increasing membership of the Council of Europe, and the accompanying growth in the number of States party to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), promises to create fresh challenges for the new single European Court of Human Rights which will begin to sit full-time in Strasbourg as of 1 November 1998. Speculation varies with regard to the type of challenges that the new Court will have to face, but one which cannot be ignored is the likelihood that the new Court will have to come to terms with more cases arising from situations of conflict. Judge Jambrek, urging judicial restraint and conservatism in a dissenting opinion, warned that the Court may have to look at what happened in the Croat Region of Kraijna, in the Republika Srpska, in other parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina or in Chechnya. If the Court is so required, many cases may involve issues which call for consideration of international humanitarian law.

At the heart of human rights work is the attempt to protect individuals from the abuse of power or neglect on the part of their own governments. At the international level, this translates into State responsibility for the way in which the government treats its own people, supplementing the older international law regarding the treatment of aliens and the law of war which also (originally) addressed only the treatment of non-nationals.

These Guiding Principles address the specific needs of internally displaced persons worldwide. They identify rights and guarantees relevant to the protection of persons from forced displacement and to their protection and assistance during displacement as well as during return or resettlement and reintegration.

On 16 September 1998, Burkina Faso deposited its instrument of ratification of the Ottawa treaty banning anti-personnel landmines. The deposit of this 40th instrument of ratification with the United Nations Secretary-General in New York means that on 1 March 1999 the treaty will become binding international law for almost a third of the 130 States which have signed it.