IRRC No. 866
Lessons for human rights and humanitarian law in the war on terror: comparing Hamdan and the Israeli Targeted Killings case
Reading time 8 min read
Share this article
This article is also available in
Abstract
The article examines and compares two recent judgments which provide some of the most valuable examples of the difficulties surrounding the application of international humanitarian law to the phenomenon of terrorism: the Hamdan judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Targeted Killings judgment of the Supreme Court of Israel. Both judgments deal with the thresholds of applicability of the law of armed conflict, as well as with the concept of unlawful combatancy and the relationship between human rights law and humanitarian law.