Posted by Dustin Lewis on November 10, 2010  |   Comment  |   Subscribe

In the past few years, some human rights treaty-monitoring bodies have increasingly incorporated international humanitarian law into their assessments of states parties’ compliance with the treaty under review. Indeed, recently published and draft articles (co-)authored by Professor David Weissbrodt detail the extent to which some treaty-monitoring bodies include IHL provisions in their General Comments or Concluding Observations, among other assessments.

According to Professor Weissbrodt and his co-authors, the Human Rights Committee (which assesses compliance with the ICCPR), the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (which assesses compliance with the CERD), and the Committee on the Rights of the Child (which assesses compliance with the CRC) has each interpreted IHL in addition to, or in parallel of, the provisions entailed in their respective treaty. When examining the work of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, for example, Professor Weissbrodt and his co-authors conclude that “although the Committee does not explicitly analyze the protections of IHL,” in the end the Committee “may contribute to the development and solidification of customary norms of international humanitarian law.”

For an additional perspective, see Professor Françoise Hampson’s article published in the International Review of the Red Cross in 2008.