Can serious Human Rights Violations justify a Breach of State Immunity?
The current legal provisions of international law on why serious human rights violations cannot be brought to domestic courts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.29.10Keywords:
human rights, International Court of Justice, international law, law enforcement, state immunity, violation of human rightsAbstract
Being created to establish a system protecting the individual for a peaceful and safe international environment, human rights often break into smithereens when it comes to individual claims. The lack of a global human rights court and defects in regional systems force many people to bring their claims to domestic courts. But after the ICJ's judgment on Germany vs. Italy of 2012 it is definitely not possible anymore to take a state to a foreign court due to a human rights violation. Still, this decision has a huge insularity towards the circumstances of the case: The ICJ had to deal with claims of victims of World War II, and in the end the court ruled that no individual human rights violation at all can be enforced before a court of another state. This is not satisfying, because instead of creating a generalized group of forbidden individual claims, it would have been more effective to establish two different case groups: One of forbidden claims of violations during systematical conflicts, and one of possible claims of victims during peaceful times. The paper presented in this abstract deals with the statement given last. It primarily explains the current provisions of international law on how human rights could be claimed before foreign courts and sums up why it would have been more human rights friendly to establish two case groups. It also depicts the case and circumstances of Germany vs. Italy and distinguishes this case from current human rights violations.