This article examines the historical evolution of the law of occupation from two angles. First, it analyses scholarly discourse and practice with respect to the general prohibition on the Occupying Power making changes to the laws and administrative structure of the occupied country, as embodied in Article 43 of the 1907 Hague Regulations. Many Occupying Powers and scholars have endeavoured to rationalize exceptions to this ‘general principle’ governing the entire corpus of the law of occupation. Their studies support the contingent nature of the law of occupation, with its interpretation being dependent on different historical settings and social context. The second part of the article focuses on how the law of occupation that evolved as a European project has rationalized excluding the system of colonialism from the framework of that law. The historical assessment of this body of jus in bello would be incomplete and biased if it did not address the narratives of such structural exclusivity.

In Al-Skeini v. United Kingdom, decided on July 7, 2011, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (the Court) found that the human rights obligations of the United Kingdom applied to its actions in Iraq and that the United Kingdom had violated Article 2 (right to life) of the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Convention or ECHR) by failing to investigate the circumstances of the deaths of the relatives of five of the six applicants. The case deals with the extraterritorial application in Iraq of the Convention, which is part of UK domestic law by virtue of the Human Rights Act, 1998, and involves the concepts of jurisdiction, effective control, and the scope of the right to life.