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Humanity: What is it and how does it influence international law?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2010

Robin Coupland
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Résumé

Pour I'auteur, le principe de l'humanité inclut la possibilité et la volonté de réduire la capacité de se livrer à la violence armée et d'en limiter les effets sur la sécurité et la santé. L'humanité ainsi interprétée englobe l'humanitarisme, la moralité, le développement, les droits de l'homme et la sécurité humaine. À ce titre, elle est une des principales sources du droit international en général et du droit international humanitaire en particulier. Dans cet article, l'auteur décrit les conséquences du lien étroit qui existe entre humanité et droit international.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 83 , Issue 844 , December 2001 , pp. 969 - 989
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 2001

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References

1 The “laws of humanity” are referred to in the St Petersburg Declaration of 1868, and in what is now known as the Martens Clause derived from the preamble to Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, adopted by the 1907 International Peace Conference at The Hague. Legal recognition of crimes against humanity originated in the jurisprudence of the Nuremberg Tribunal; such acts also constitute a category of crime in the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. – Brownlie states that humanity is a source of international law. He cites as a classic reference the judgment in the Corfu Channel case (I.C.J. Reports 1949, p. 22): the court relied on certain “general and well recognised principles”, including “elementary considerations of humanity, even more exacting in peace than in war”. Brownlie, I., Principles of Public International Law, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998, p. 28.Google Scholar

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6 The definition of violence adopted by the World Health Organization is: “[T]he intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a likelihood to result in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.” From Koplan, J. et al. Violence Prevention: A Public Health Policy, Atlanta, Centers for Disease Control, 1998Google Scholar. See also Coupland, R., “Armed violence”, Medicine and Global Survival, vol. 7, 2001, pp. 33–37.Google Scholar

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20 Op. cit. (note 18), p. 144.

21 Separate Opinion of President Nagendra Singh, Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. the United States of America), Merits, I.C.J. Reports 1986, pp. 143 and 146 respectively.

22 Statute of the International Criminal Court, Art. 5.

23 The obvious exception is the crimes cited in Art. 7(1)(g): rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity. Whilst this category of crime could clearly be committed without weapons, the power differential required to commit them is given by weapons and also by the difference in physical build between most men and women.

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29 Op. cit. (notes 17, 25, 26 and 28, respectively).

30 Coupland, op. cit. (note 6).

31 The definition of health as given in the World Health Organization's mission statement is: “A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” WHO website.

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33 See note 31. The definition of security is “the state of being or feeling secure”, and of secure: “certain to remain safe and unthreat- preened; protected against attack or other criminal activity; feeling free from fear and anxiety”, op. cit. (note 7).

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39 See note 31.

40 UN Charter, Art. 2(7).

41 UN Charter, Art. 1(1).

42 UN Charter, Art. 40.

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49 Coupland, op. cit. (note 6).

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55 Examples are the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.

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59 The principle treaties of international humanitarian law are the 1949 Geneva Conventions for the protection of war victims and the 1977 Additional Protocols thereto. Some other treaties are considered part of international humanitarian law, such as the 1980 UN Convention on Conventional Weapons and the 1997 Ottawa Anti-personnel Mines Treaty.

60 Op. cit. (note 28), p. 410. P. Alston, “The myopia of handmaidens: International lawyers and globalization”, EJIL, vol. 3, 1997, pp. 435–448.

61 To coincide with the 50th anniversary of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the British Medical Journal published a special theme issue on 14 August 1999 entitled “Medicine and international law.” It examined the role of health professionals in the upholding of human rights and international humanitarian law.

62 Slim, H., “Sharing a Universal Ethic: the Principle of Humanity in War”, International Journal of Human Rights, vol. 2, 1998, pp. 28–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar