Transatlantic Dialogue on Int'l Law and Armed Conflict: Ken Watkin on the IHL/IHRL Interface

The next installment in the series of posts derived from this summer's Transatlantic Dialogue on International Law and Armed Conflict is now live at the ICRC's Intercross blog. It is from Ken Watkin, and it concerns the overlap of IHL and IHRL. A taste:

It is possible to address the perennial debate about the relationship between international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) from a number of perspectives. In these posts, I would like to set out some of the issues that deserve close attention. First, there is the strategic theoretical conflict that continues to play out between the advocates of exclusionary applications of IHL and IHRL. This is a conflict that is firmly grounded in different views emanating from each side of the Atlantic. Secondly, there are the different perspectives brought to this issue based on the unique North American (in this context the United States and Canada) and European legal systems, as well as differing geographic and experiential factors. Thirdly, there is the ongoing reliance on customary international law, domestic law and policy to assist in resolving what appears on its surface to be an intractable theoretical impasse. Finally, notwithstanding the exclusionary debate the reality is that military forces are applying both IHL and IHRL norms during contemporary operations, although approaches that seek to uniquely apply one legal framework over the other will continue present operational challenges.