Institutional approach of IHL and IHRL: current trends in the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Abstract

Recently, the interaction between International Human Rights Law (IHRL) and International Humanitarian Law (IHL) has been significantly developed by the jurisprudence of the Inter- American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). This article analyzes this recent trend from the cases of the Santo Domingo Massacre
and Afro communities displaced from the Cacarica River Basin (Operation Genesis) of this tribunal to assert its competence not only to use IHL to interpret the Inter-American human rights instruments but, at the same time, to approach a direct use of humanitarian standards, which creates a gray area between the interpretation and application of such area of Law. In doing so, the Court resorts to the lex specialis if the IHL norm is the most specialized for the case, and uses IHL to a limited extent, only to expand the content of human rights, but not to judge on possible violations of IHL, which results in a methodology of pick and choose of IHL provisions.