40 - Customary Rules Pertaining to the Right to Life

Summary

This chapter summarises the customary rules pertaining to the right to life. They bind not only States but also international organisations and, with respect to specific rules in certain circumstances, also non-State actors. The chapter further identifies those rules of general international law that have attained the status of peremptory norms (jus cogens) on the basis of their acceptance and recognition as such by the international community of States as a whole. Such norms bind all actors, whether State or non-State in character. Finally, the chapter delineates those rules that are custom in the making – de lege ferenda – but which have not yet crystallised, for want of opinio juris that is both general among States and specific among those States that are specially affected by it.