HUMAN RIGHTS AND PERSONAL SELF-DEFENSE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW

HUMAN RIGHTS AND PERSONAL SELF-DEFENSE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW BY JAN ARNO HESSBRUEGGE (OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, ID?) 400 PAGES, PRICE GBP 64.00 (HARDCOVER) ISBN 9780190655020.

I BACKGROUND

While the 'natural right' of state self-defence in international law, as recognised by art 51 of the Charter of the United Nations (' UN Charted) and as part of jus ad/contra bellum, has been the subject of much legal debate,1 personal self-defence, ie self-defence exercised by individuals, and its regulation under international law remains to a large extent underexplored in international legal scholarship. The book by Jan Arno Hessbruegge on Human Rights and Personal Self-Defense in International Law published by Oxford University Press in 2017 fills this important gap in the literature.2

Personal self-defence is increasingly used and misused in order to justify the use of force - including deadly force - to ward off allegedly unlawful attacks in peacetime and wartime alike. It is invoked by various actors in diverse contexts. Law enforcement officials commonly claim self-defence in order to justify the killing of alleged criminals;3 and the state they represent may equally refer to self-defence on the international plane to justify such restrictions to the right to life under human rights law.4 Military personnel (and the state they represent) equally rely on self-defence (in its various dimensions, in particular personal and unit self-defence or defence of others) in order to justify the use of force in armed conflict situations, despite the applicability of international humanitarian law that has been conceived to regulate the conduct of hostilities between belligerent parties.5 In some instances, such self-defence claims are perfectly sound and consonant with international law. This is the case especially when service members have to justify the use of force against violent civilians whose acts did not amount to direct participation in hostilities.6 For instance, when threatened by an unknown individual who must be presumed to be a civilian, a soldier may justify his or her use of force based on self-defence. In other cases, reliance on fuzzy concepts of self-defence, such as 'naked selfdefence',7 which would allegedly authorise and regulate the use of force against, for instance, lone wolf terrorists outside armed conflict situations is much more problematic and tends to conflate personal and inter-state self-defence.

Personal self-defence,...