International Human Rights Law vs International Humanitarian Law: Key Differences for Students
- Edmarverson A. Santos
- 4 days ago
- 20 min read
Introduction
The central difference in international human rights law vs international humanitarian law is not simply that one governs peace and the other governs war. International humanitarian law (IHL) is triggered by the existence of an armed conflict and regulates matters such as the conduct of hostilities, protection of civilians and other protected persons, and treatment of people in the power of a party to the conflict. International human rights law (IHRL), by contrast, is not activated by armed conflict: applicable human rights obligations continue in both peace and war, subject to the scope of the relevant treaty, jurisdiction requirements, and any lawful limitation or derogation.
For students, the first analytical task is to determine whether each legal regime applies before comparing their substantive rules. An IHL analysis begins by asking whether the facts amount to an international or non-international armed conflict and which treaty or customary rules govern it. An IHRL analysis requires identification of the relevant human rights instrument, whether the State is bound by it, whether the person falls within its jurisdiction, and whether a limitation or derogation affects the right in question. An armed conflict and a public emergency are distinct legal concepts; establishing one does not automatically establish the other.
The two regimes may operate concurrently. In its Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice confirmed that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not cease to apply during armed conflict and held that international humanitarian law may supply the relevant specialized standard when assessing whether a deprivation of life is arbitrary (International Court of Justice, 1996, para. 25). In the Wall advisory opinion, the Court distinguished matters governed by IHL, matters governed by human rights law, and matters falling under both regimes (International Court of Justice, 2004, para. 106). It later applied international humanitarian law and international human rights law concurrently in Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (International Court of Justice, 2005, paras 216–220).
That overlap is where the comparison becomes legally more difficult. IHL does not automatically override IHRL whenever fighting begins, and lex specialis should not be treated as an on-off rule for choosing between entire bodies of law. Accurate analysis proceeds issue by issue: the applicable rule under each regime must first be identified before determining how the two interact in relation to the particular conduct. This is especially important for lethal force and the right to life, detention and internment, extraterritorial military operations, and other situations in which IHL and IHRL regulate the same facts from different legal starting points.
1. International Human Rights Law vs International Humanitarian Law
International human rights law (IHRL) and international humanitarian law (IHL) both protect human beings, but they operate through different legal structures and address different problems. IHRL principally establishes obligations of States toward persons within the scope of applicable human rights law. IHL applies specifically in armed conflict, protecting people affected by hostilities and restricting the means and methods by which warfare may be conducted.
The distinction is therefore not simply between “peacetime law” and “wartime law.” Human rights obligations may continue during armed conflict, while IHL becomes applicable because the factual and legal conditions for an armed conflict have been met. The same incident can consequently engage both regimes, although the rules each applies may differ.
Their sources must also be distinguished. IHRL is based principally on universal and regional human rights treaties, supplemented where applicable by customary international law and general principles. Judicial decisions, treaty-body Views, General Comments, and other institutional materials may interpret those obligations, but they do not all carry the same legal status. Treaty obligations should not be presented as customary law merely because similar rules exist in both forms.
IHL likewise combines treaty and customary law. Its treaty framework includes the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Hague rules, the Additional Protocols, and specialized instruments dealing with particular weapons, persons, and protected objects. The Geneva Conventions are universally ratified, whereas the Additional Protocols do not bind every State as treaties (ICRC, 2026). Many rules reflected in the Protocols also exist independently as customary international law, but customary status must be established rule by rule rather than assumed for the Protocols as a whole.
Issue | International human rights law | International humanitarian law |
Trigger for application | Depends on the applicable treaty or customary obligation and, where relevant, jurisdiction | Existence of an international or non-international armed conflict; occupation is also governed by the applicable rules |
Temporal scope | Generally applies in peace and armed conflict, subject to the governing instrument | Applies for the legally relevant duration of armed conflict or occupation; some obligations continue afterward |
Principal sources | Human rights treaties, customary international law, and general principles where applicable | Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocols, Hague and specialized treaties, and customary IHL |
Main function | Protection of individual rights and corresponding State obligations | Protection of persons affected by conflict and regulation of means and methods of warfare |
Persons protected | Persons falling within the scope or jurisdiction of the applicable obligation | Civilians, persons hors de combat, wounded and sick persons, detainees, prisoners of war, and other protected categories, depending on the conflict |
Principal duty-bearers | Primarily States bound by the relevant treaty; customary obligations operate according to the law of custom | Parties to the armed conflict, including qualifying non-State armed groups in NIACs |
Derogation | Some treaties permit limited derogation during qualifying emergencies; others do not | No comparable general emergency derogation mechanism |
Use of force | Right-to-life standards apply; outside conduct-of-hostilities situations, law-enforcement necessity and proportionality are ordinarily central, while applicable IHL may inform the assessment during hostilities | Conduct of hostilities governed by distinction, targeting rules, proportionality in attack, precautions, and related rules |
Detention | Legality, non-arbitrariness, procedural safeguards, and review under the applicable system | Conflict-specific detention regimes; POW and civilian internment rules apply in IAC, while NIAC detention raises different questions |
Enforcement and supervision | Domestic remedies, treaty bodies, regional courts and commissions, reporting, and complaint mechanisms where available | Domestic implementation, State responsibility, ICRC and other supervisory mechanisms, and criminal accountability where conduct satisfies the elements of an applicable crime |
The table identifies the principal differences, but the categories are not absolute. Human rights law may regulate detention, occupation, investigations, and uses of force occurring during armed conflict. IHL may provide specialized rules needed to assess conduct that also engages a human rights guarantee. The correct comparison therefore begins by identifying the applicable rule under each body of law before asking how the two interact.
2. When Each Body of Law Applies
Applicability comes first because applying the correct substantive rule under the wrong legal regime still produces an incorrect analysis. IHL applies on the basis of objective facts rather than political terminology. Under Common Article 2 of the Geneva Conventions, an international armed conflict exists where armed force is used between States, and the Conventions also apply to occupation of a State party’s territory even when the occupation encounters no armed resistance. A formal declaration of war is unnecessary.
A non-international armed conflict requires a different threshold. In Prosecutor v Tadić, the ICTY referred to “protracted armed violence” involving governmental authorities and organized armed groups, or such groups among themselves. Later jurisprudence developed organization and intensity as the two principal factual criteria for distinguishing a NIAC from riots, isolated violence, and internal disturbances (Tadić, 1995, para. 70; Haradinaj, 2008, paras 49–60; Boškoski and Tarčulovski, 2008, paras 177–205).
Additional Protocol II has a narrower treaty threshold. It applies only where its own requirements are satisfied, including the involvement of a State party’s armed forces and an organized armed group exercising sufficient territorial control to conduct sustained and concerted military operations and implement the Protocol. Common Article 3 therefore governs a wider range of NIACs than Additional Protocol II.
Political labels do not determine classification. Calling an operation a “war on terror,” a counterterrorism campaign, a security operation, or a war on crime neither creates nor excludes an armed conflict. Once the threshold is crossed, the conflict must still be classified correctly because IAC and NIAC do not carry identical treaty rules, status categories, or detention regimes. The Common Article 3 in Non-International Armed Conflict analysis addresses that threshold in greater detail.
IHRL follows a different path. Its application does not depend on the existence of an armed conflict. The analysis instead requires identification of the applicable treaty or customary obligation, whether the State is bound by it, the substantive right at issue, and, where the instrument contains a jurisdiction requirement, whether the affected person falls within that jurisdiction. Military activity outside a State’s territory does not automatically establish jurisdiction under every human rights treaty merely because IHL applies to the operation.
An armed conflict must also be distinguished from a public emergency. Armed conflict activates IHL; an emergency may permit derogation from specified human rights obligations only where the relevant treaty authorizes derogation and its conditions are satisfied. The two thresholds perform different legal functions and should not be used interchangeably.
3. Who Is Protected and Who Is Bound?
Human rights treaties generally organize protection around rights held by individuals and obligations undertaken by States. A human rights problem therefore requires identification of the applicable instrument, the State’s participation in it, the right invoked, and any territorial or jurisdictional requirement. Different human rights systems do not apply identical tests of extraterritorial jurisdiction, so European, Inter-American, and United Nations approaches cannot simply be collapsed into one universal formula.
IHL relies more heavily on legally defined categories connected to the armed conflict. Civilians are protected against direct attack unless and for such time as they directly participate in hostilities. Persons hors de combat may not lawfully be attacked. In international armed conflict, combatant and prisoner-of-war status carry consequences that have no direct equivalent in ordinary human rights law. Other rules protect wounded and sick persons, detainees, civilian internees, inhabitants of occupied territory, medical personnel, and additional protected categories.
Those classifications depend on the type of conflict and the applicable legal source. Prisoner-of-war status, for example, belongs to the law of international armed conflict and cannot simply be transferred to NIACs. Common Article 3 instead establishes minimum protections for persons taking no active part in hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and persons placed hors de combat.
The identity of the duty-bearer also differs. Human rights treaties principally impose obligations on States parties. Whether, and on what legal basis, non-State armed groups may bear direct human rights responsibilities is more contested and can depend on the institutional framework, the group’s degree of territorial control, and the particular proposition being asserted.
IHL directly binds parties to an armed conflict. Common Article 3 requires “each Party to the conflict” to comply with its minimum protections, which includes organized non-State armed groups participating in a NIAC. That does not recognize the group as a State or legitimize its political cause; Common Article 3 expressly provides that application of its rules does not affect the legal status of the parties.
IHL also regulates interests that do not fit neatly into an individual-rights model. Its rules protect civilian objects, medical units and transports, cultural property, humanitarian operations, and other specially protected objects, while also governing weapons and methods of warfare. This broader regulatory function is one reason IHL and IHRL cannot be understood as two competing catalogues of individual rights.
4. How IHL and IHRL Apply Together in Armed Conflict
Does human rights law apply during war? Yes. The existence of armed conflict does not automatically terminate applicable human rights obligations. The harder question is how a particular human rights rule interacts with the IHL rule governing the same conduct.
The International Court of Justice established the basic framework through three leading authorities. In Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, the Court stated that ICCPR protection does not cease in wartime except through a valid Article 4 derogation and held that applicable IHL may determine whether a deprivation of life during hostilities is “arbitrary” (ICJ, 1996, para. 25). In the Wall advisory opinion, it identified three possible relationships: some matters may fall within IHL, some within human rights law, and some within both (ICJ, 2004, para. 106). In Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo, the Court applied humanitarian and human rights obligations concurrently to Uganda’s conduct in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (ICJ, 2005, paras 216–220).
For students, the practical consequence matters more than memorizing a formula. The existence of two applicable regimes does not mean that both impose identical tests, nor does it mean that one entire body of law automatically displaces the other. The relevant conduct must first be identified—such as a killing, detention, search, occupation measure, or investigation—before the applicable IHL and IHRL rules are compared.
The expression lex specialis should therefore be used with precision. It can help explain why a more specific humanitarian rule informs or governs the assessment of a particular wartime issue, but it is not an automatic hierarchy in which IHL defeats every human rights obligation once hostilities begin. Specificity operates at the level of the legal problem. In some situations, IHL supplies the operative standard; in others, human rights law adds requirements that IHL does not formulate in the same way.
Applicability must also remain separate from human rights jurisdiction. IHL may govern conduct because an armed conflict exists even where a human rights court or treaty body concludes that the affected person did not fall within the respondent State’s jurisdiction under the relevant instrument. Conversely, where human rights jurisdiction is established, armed conflict does not by itself remove the treaty’s application.
Derogation is a separate question again. Article 4 ICCPR permits derogation only during an officially proclaimed public emergency threatening the life of the nation and only to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation. Derogating measures must remain consistent with the State’s other international obligations, respect the Covenant’s non-derogable provisions, and must not involve discrimination solely on grounds of race, color, sex, language, religion, or social origin. The State must also notify the other States parties through the UN Secretary-General of the provisions from which it has derogated and the reasons for doing so (ICCPR, 1966, art. 4; Human Rights Committee, 2001).
Other systems differ. Article 15 ECHR and Article 27 ACHR establish their own emergency derogation regimes and lists of non-derogable guarantees. The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights contains no general derogation clause. A valid derogation under one treaty therefore cannot be assumed to have the same legal effect under another.
IHL has no comparable general mechanism allowing a party to suspend humanitarian rules because military conditions are severe. Military necessity is already incorporated into the structure of particular IHL rules and does not operate as a general defense to non-compliance. That point must also be kept separate from jus cogens: the absence of a derogation mechanism does not mean that every IHL rule is peremptory, just as a non-derogable human rights provision is not automatically a norm of jus cogens.
5. Where IHL and IHRL Use Different Legal Tests
Concurrent application does not make international humanitarian law and international human rights law interchangeable. The same act may engage both regimes while being assessed through different legal concepts, thresholds, and forms of proportionality. A sound answer needs to establish what each body of law asks before examining how the rules interact.
Lethal force and detention expose that distinction particularly well. In the first, the contrast lies largely between human rights standards governing deprivation of life and IHL rules designed for the conduct of hostilities. In the second, the question shifts toward the legal basis for deprivation of liberty, status, grounds of internment, procedural safeguards, and review.
Students should resist importing terminology across the regimes without first identifying its legal source. “Proportionality,” for example, performs different work in human rights law and targeting law, while “internment” and “prisoner of war” belong to conflict-specific frameworks that cannot simply be transferred into an ordinary human rights analysis.
5.1 Use of Force and the Right to Life
Under IHRL, the starting point is the right to life and the prohibition of arbitrary deprivation of life. In its interpretation of Article 6 ICCPR, the Human Rights Committee treats potentially lethal force in law-enforcement operations as an exceptional measure that may be used only when strictly necessary to protect life or prevent serious injury from an imminent threat. Necessity and proportionality operate here in relation to the threat that the authorities are seeking to address (Human Rights Committee, 2018, paras 12–13).
IHL conduct-of-hostilities rules ask different questions. They require parties to distinguish civilians and civilian objects from persons and objects that may lawfully be attacked under the applicable rules, prohibit direct attacks against civilians unless and for such time as they directly participate in hostilities, restrict attacks to military objectives, prohibit attacks expected to cause excessive incidental civilian harm, and require applicable precautions. Proportionality in attack compares anticipated incidental civilian harm with the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated; it is not the same legal test as proportionality in human rights law.
An incident does not fall automatically within the conduct-of-hostilities paradigm merely because it occurs during an armed conflict. Armed forces may engage opposing forces while also exercising policing, checkpoint, detention, crowd-control, or other public-authority functions. The nature of the operation, the status and conduct of the person affected, the surrounding hostilities, and the applicable legal framework all matter.
The Nuclear Weapons principle discussed earlier is relevant here for a specific reason: continued application of Article 6 does not require a battlefield attack to be judged as though it were an ordinary police operation. IHL may provide the specialized rules informing whether a wartime deprivation of life is arbitrary. The Human Rights Committee likewise interprets Article 6 and IHL as capable of concurrent application and has stated that conduct inconsistent with IHL that endangers civilians and other protected persons may also violate the right to life (Human Rights Committee, 2018, para. 64). General Comment No. 36 is an authoritative treaty-body interpretation of the ICCPR, not a judicial judgment binding across all human rights systems.
The legality of the underlying resort to force remains a separate question. Jus ad bellum concerns whether a State may use force under the UN Charter; jus in bello governs conduct once an armed conflict exists. An unlawful resort to war does not remove the obligation to assess individual attacks under IHL, while a State acting lawfully in self-defense acquires no exemption from humanitarian or applicable human rights obligations.
5.2 Detention and Internment
Detention reveals a different type of IHL–IHRL interaction. Human rights law protects liberty through requirements of legality and non-arbitrariness together with procedural safeguards and review under the relevant instrument. Article 9 ICCPR prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention, while Article 5 ECHR contains specified permissible grounds for deprivation of liberty and associated procedural guarantees.
International armed conflict has its own detention architecture. The Third Geneva Convention permits the internment of prisoners of war on the basis of their status and regulates their treatment until release and repatriation. The Fourth Geneva Convention permits civilian internment or assigned residence only on demanding security grounds and requires reconsideration and periodic review. These rules are not merely human rights detention standards adapted to war; they arise from a distinct humanitarian-law framework.
NIAC presents a more difficult problem. Common Article 3 and Additional Protocol II regulate the treatment of detainees, but they do not expressly establish a general ground or comprehensive procedure for security internment. Whether IHL itself supplies authority to intern in NIAC remains contested. The dispute has appeared in litigation including Al-Waheed v Ministry of Defence; Serdar Mohammed v Ministry of Defence and in ICRC and academic analysis of security detention in non-international armed conflict (UK Supreme Court, 2017; ICRC, 2014). That uncertainty should be stated rather than replaced with an assumed detention power.
Hassan v United Kingdom addresses a narrower problem. British forces detained an Iraqi national during an international armed conflict, and the United Kingdom had not derogated from Article 5 ECHR. The Grand Chamber interpreted Article 5 in light of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions, concluding that detention consistent with the applicable IHL grounds and safeguards could be accommodated within the Convention (ECtHR, 2014, paras 96–107).
The judgment does not establish a general wartime detention power. It concerned Article 5 ECHR and IHL detention rules applicable in an international armed conflict. The joint partly dissenting opinion objected to the majority's interpretive approach, particularly because Article 5 ordinarily contains an exhaustive list of detention grounds and no Article 15 derogation had been made. Hassan is significant, but its holding should not be generalized to every treaty or every armed conflict.
A detention problem is best approached in stages: classify the conflict, identify the person's status, establish any available IHL detention authority and safeguards, determine the applicable human rights treaty and jurisdiction, examine any valid derogation, and then assess the interaction between the regimes. This sequence prevents an IAC detention rule, a NIAC protection rule, or a regional human rights judgment from being applied outside the legal setting in which it operates.
6. A Student Method for IHL–IHRL Problem Questions
An IHL–IHRL problem is easier to manage when classification precedes substantive analysis. Begin with the actor, the conduct, and the person affected. If humanitarian law may apply, establish whether an armed conflict exists and whether it is international or non-international. That classification determines which treaty rules, status categories, and conflict-specific protections are potentially available.
Next identify the legal sources rather than treating “IHL” or “human rights law” as single undifferentiated codes. On the humanitarian side, determine which treaties bind the relevant parties and whether a customary rule applies independently. On the human rights side, identify the treaty, establish that the State is bound, determine jurisdiction, identify the substantive right, and examine any limitation or derogation permitted by that instrument.
Only then should the two analyses be brought together. The relevant question is not whether IHL or IHRL prevails in the abstract. Ask instead whether both rules can operate together, whether one supplies a more specific standard for the issue, and whether the second regime adds requirements that the first does not address in the same way.
Cases become much easier to use when each is tied to a defined proposition. Nuclear Weapons concerns continued human rights protection and the relevance of IHL to arbitrariness under the right to life. Wall identifies the possible relationships between the regimes. Armed Activities demonstrates concurrent application. Al-Skeini v United Kingdom is central to the ECHR's extraterritorial jurisdiction framework, while Hassan concerns interpretive accommodation between Article 5 and IHL detention rules in an international armed conflict.
Consider a State conducting military operations abroad. Soldiers kill an individual at a checkpoint and later intern another civilian for security reasons. A legal analysis should not classify both events as ordinary battlefield conduct simply because they occur during the same conflict. The killing requires attention to the nature of the operation, the person's status and conduct, the applicable use-of-force paradigm, and human rights jurisdiction. The internment raises separate questions about conflict classification, detention authority, safeguards, status, jurisdiction, and derogation.
Readers who need systematic treatment of jurisdiction, derogation, substantive rights, and human rights institutions can continue with the International Human Rights Law Study Guide. Those working primarily with conflict classification, status, targeting, detention, occupation, and the wider humanitarian-law framework can use the International Humanitarian Law Study Guide. The distinction reflects the different legal work each subject requires rather than treating the two guides as substitutes for one another.
7. Mistakes That Distort the IHL–IHRL Comparison
Describing IHRL as law for peace and IHL as law for war creates errors immediately. IHL is conflict-specific, but human rights obligations may continue during armed conflict. Hostilities do not themselves establish a valid derogation, extinguish treaty jurisdiction, or displace every human rights guarantee.
Similar problems arise when lex specialis is invoked before the relevant rules have been identified. The expression does not resolve whether the issue concerns an attack, security detention, judicial review, investigation, occupation, or another exercise of authority. Specificity can only be assessed in relation to the concrete legal question.
Extraterritorial military operations add a separate threshold. The fact that IHL applies abroad does not automatically establish jurisdiction under a human rights treaty. Human rights jurisdiction has to be established under the applicable system. Once it is established, the opposite mistake should also be avoided: not every use of force by soldiers during an armed conflict is governed primarily by conduct-of-hostilities rules.
Emergency concepts require equally careful labeling. A non-derogable right is not necessarily absolute, and neither category is synonymous with jus cogens. Article 18 ICCPR illustrates the difference: freedom of thought, conscience, and religion is listed among the Covenant's non-derogable rights, yet manifestations of religion remain subject to the limitations permitted by Article 18(3). The legal effect follows from the particular provision, not from treating the labels as interchangeable.
Conflict classification creates its own recurring errors. Rules written for international armed conflict should not be transferred automatically to NIAC. The Additional Protocols do not bind every State as treaties merely because numerous Protocol rules may also exist as customary international law. The ICRC Customary IHL Study is influential institutional evidence and analysis of customary law, but its publication does not itself create binding custom. State practice and opinio juris remain the legal inquiry.
Military necessity is another concept that is easily overstated. It is reflected within the structure of IHL rules and does not supply a general permission to disregard an express prohibition. The same discipline separates jus ad bellum from jus in bello: an unlawful war may contain operations that comply with IHL, while lawful self-defense does not relax the rules governing how hostilities are conducted.
The final check concerns authority. A Geneva Convention provision derives its force from treaty law for the States bound by it. Customary law requires the elements of custom. ICJ judgments and advisory opinions, ECtHR judgments, Human Rights Committee General Comments, and ICRC commentaries have different institutional functions and legal effects. A precise answer identifies the source and its status instead of presenting treaty-specific, regional, institutional, or contested propositions as universal rules.
Recommended Study Guides
A reader who only needs to understand the difference between IHL and IHRL, the basic rules of concurrent application, and the order in which the two regimes should be analyzed may not need additional material. The purpose of the study guides is different: they provide systematic coverage when the comparison is only one part of a larger course, examination, or research problem.
The International Human Rights Law Study Guide is aimed at beginner-to-intermediate study of IHRL. Across 121 pages, it covers foundations and sources, State obligations, jurisdiction and extraterritoriality, limitations and derogations, United Nations and regional systems, substantive rights, enforcement, and intersections with humanitarian, criminal, and refugee law. Its recurring study devices include learning objectives, legal-test boxes, case briefs, common-misunderstanding boxes, and revision points.
That guide is the closer fit for a student whose main difficulty lies on the human rights side of the comparison—for example, determining treaty jurisdiction, distinguishing limitations from derogations, understanding the status of treaty-body outputs, or applying rights within different regional systems. The present article addresses the IHRL–IHL boundary; it does not replace systematic study of the wider human rights framework.
The International Humanitarian Law Study Guide is designed for readers who need the armed-conflict side in greater depth. Its 160 pages cover IHL sources and principles, IAC and NIAC classification, combatant and civilian status, direct participation in hostilities, targeting, proportionality and precautions, weapons, detention, occupation, humanitarian relief, multinational operations, State responsibility, war crimes, and interaction with related legal regimes. Its revision material includes analytical frameworks, common mistakes, issue-spotting tools, integrated problem questions, and self-assessment answer frameworks.
For a student taking an IHL course, that second guide will usually be the more relevant choice. A reader studying both fields, preparing for an assessment that crosses human rights and armed-conflict law, or researching military operations from both perspectives may have a practical reason to use both. The value lies in structured depth and legal differentiation, not in repeating the comparison already provided here.
Also read
Conclusion
International human rights law vs international humanitarian law is best approached as a problem of applicability, legal source, and function rather than a contest over which regime “wins.” IHL is triggered by armed conflict and contains rules designed for hostilities and for people affected by conflict. IHRL continues according to the scope, jurisdiction, substantive provisions, and derogation rules of the applicable human rights law.
Where both regimes apply, the legal test depends on the issue. Lethal force may require careful separation of conduct-of-hostilities rules from law-enforcement standards; detention may require coordination between conflict-specific authority and human rights guarantees of liberty and review. Concurrent application does not erase those differences.
For study and research, the essential discipline is to identify the facts, classify the legal setting, establish the applicable sources, and apply each regime on its own terms before addressing the overlap. That method avoids the most common category errors while preserving the distinct legal logic of both IHL and IHRL.
References
Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (1977) Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), adopted 8 June 1977, entered into force 7 December 1978, 1125 UNTS 3.
Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions (1977) Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II), adopted 8 June 1977, entered into force 7 December 1978, 1125 UNTS 609.
African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1981) adopted 27 June 1981, entered into force 21 October 1986, 1520 UNTS 217.
American Convention on Human Rights (1969) adopted 22 November 1969, entered into force 18 July 1978, 1144 UNTS 123.
Charter of the United Nations (1945) signed 26 June 1945, entered into force 24 October 1945, 1 UNTS XVI.
European Convention on Human Rights (1950) Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, signed 4 November 1950, entered into force 3 September 1953, ETS No. 5, 213 UNTS 221.
European Court of Human Rights (2011) Al-Skeini and Others v United Kingdom, Application No. 55721/07, Grand Chamber judgment, 7 July 2011.
European Court of Human Rights (2014) Hassan v United Kingdom, Application No. 29750/09, Grand Chamber judgment, 16 September 2014.
Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 (1949) adopted 12 August 1949, entered into force 21 October 1950, 75 UNTS 31, 85, 135 and 287.
Henckaerts, J.-M. and Doswald-Beck, L. (eds) (2005) Customary International Humanitarian Law. Volume I: Rules. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Human Rights Committee (2018) General Comment No. 36 (2018) on Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, on the Right to Life, CCPR/C/GC/36, 30 October 2018.
International Committee of the Red Cross (2014) Internment in Armed Conflict: Basic Rules and Challenges. Opinion Paper, November 2014. Geneva: International Committee of the Red Cross. Available at: https://www.icrc.org/en/document/internment-armed-conflict-basic-rules-and-challenges (Accessed: 3 September 2026).
International Committee of the Red Cross (2026) States Party to the Following International Humanitarian Law and Other Related Treaties as of 14 April 2026 [online]. Available at: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/public/refdocs/IHL_and_other_related_Treaties.pdf (Accessed: 3 September 2026).
International Court of Justice (1996) Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, Advisory Opinion, 8 July 1996, ICJ Reports 1996, p. 226.
International Court of Justice (2004) Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Advisory Opinion, 9 July 2004, ICJ Reports 2004, p. 136.
International Court of Justice (2005) Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v Uganda), Judgment, 19 December 2005, ICJ Reports 2005, p. 168.
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966) adopted 16 December 1966, entered into force 23 March 1976, 999 UNTS 171.
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (1995) Prosecutor v Tadić, Decision on the Defence Motion for Interlocutory Appeal on Jurisdiction, Case No. IT-94-1-AR72, Appeals Chamber, 2 October 1995.
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (2008a) Prosecutor v Boškoski and Tarčulovski, Judgment, Case No. IT-04-82-T, Trial Chamber II, 10 July 2008.
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (2008b) Prosecutor v Haradinaj, Balaj and Brahimaj, Judgment, Case No. IT-04-84-T, Trial Chamber I, 3 April 2008.
United Kingdom Supreme Court (2017) Al-Waheed v Ministry of Defence; Serdar Mohammed v Ministry of Defence, Judgment, 17 January 2017, [2017] UKSC 2, [2017] AC 821.
