A human rights law of internal armed conflict: The European Court of Human Rights in Chechnya

Abstract

The cases on Chechnya recently decided by the European Court of Human Rights force us to re-evaluate the relationship between human rights law and humanitarian law. Since the International Court of Justice held that humanitarian law is lex specialis to human rights law in 1996 - if not since the Tehran Conference of 1968 - it has been widely accepted that 'human rights in armed conflict' refers to humanitarian law. The ECtHR has directly applied human rights law to the conduct of hostilities in internal armed conflicts. The rules it has applied may prove controversial, but humanitarian law's limited substantive scope and poor record of achieving compliance in internal armed conflicts suggest the importance of this new approach. © EJIL 2005; all rights reserved.