I trattati di diritto internazionale umanitario e dei diritti umani

In its 2011 Draft articles on the effects of armed conflicts on treaties, the International Law Commission’s included international humanitarian law and human rights treaties in a (non-exhaustive) list of treaties which, by virtue of their subject matter, are presumed to ‘survive’, in whole or in part, an armed conflict. The Draft articles and their commentary only briefly mention certain other issues that do not pertain to the (continued) operation of these two categories of treaties in the event of an armed conflict but, instead, to their application – i.e., the derogation clauses inserted in some human rights treaties and the presumed lex specialis nature of international humanitarian law. More than ten years after the adoption of the Draft articles, these and other contentious issues concerning the applicability of international human rights and humanitarian law treaties in time of armed conflict certainly warrant further investigation. Thus, after briefly commenting on the stance taken by the International Law Commission on the matter of the (continued) operation of international human rights and humanitarian law treaties, the present chapter will focus on the European Convention of Human Rights, with a view to examining some selected issues related to its application in the context of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, i.e., that of its extraterritorial application and that of its interaction with the rules of international humanitarian law.