Forcible Self-Help by States to Protect Human Rights
![handle is hein.journals/ilr53 and id is 353 raw text is: FORCIBLE SELF-HELP BY STATES TO PROTECT
HUMAN RIGHTS
Richard B. Lillich*
Customary international law permitted states to use measures of
forcible self-help to protect their formal legal rights.: In the area of
human rights, the doctrines of the protection of nationals abroad and of
humanitarian intervention both contemplated the use of self-help by
states, either individually or collectively, as an enforcement tech-
nique.2 Members of the United Nations, in forming that organization,
renounced the threat or use of force against other states,3 but they
did not substitute, and to date have not substituted, other means of
compliance to assure the observance of substantive human rights
norms.4 Yet, as far back as 1952 Waldock warned that any law which
prohibits resort to force without providing a legitimate claimant with
adequate alternative means of obtaining redress, contains the seeds of
trouble.5 Trouble has sprouted so often during the past decade that
the International Law Association at its Helsinki Conference in 1966
adopted a resolution on human rights expressly recording its desire
to see the emphasis in this field shifted from definition to implementa-
tion.6
* Professor of Law and Director, International Legal Studies, Syracuse Uni-
versity. Director, Procedural Aspects of International Law Institute. A.B.,
Oberlin College; LL.B., Cornell University; LL.M., J.D.S., New York University.
1 Traditionally international law allowed individual States or groups of States
to take appropriate measures in the territories of other States for protection and
enforcement of their rights. Such action was not technically intervention. 1
D. O'CoNxLL, INTERNATIONAL LAw 326 (1965).
2See generally A. THoluAs & A. THowAs, No -INTEavEmoN 303-28, 372-90
(1956) [hereinafter cited as THoMAs & THomAs].
3 U.N. CHARTER art. 2, para. 4.
4 The most difficult problem still confronting the framers of the United
Nations' human rights program is that of devising effective procedures for en-
forcement!' McDougal & Bebr, Human Rights in the United Nations, 58 A3L J.
INT'L L. 603, 629 (1964).
5Waldock, The Regulation of the Use of Force by Individual States in Interna-
tional Law, 81 REcuEIL DES Coues (Hague Academy of International Law) 455
(11-1952).
6 INT'L L. ASs'N, ADvAcE REPORT BY THE AammcAN BRANCH OF THE RESOLUTONS
ADOPTED AT THE FiETY-SECOND CONFERENC: 12 (Helsinki 1966). When the Interna-
tional Law Association established a Committee on Human Rights in 1965 it
specifically instructed it to consider whether there should be a shift in emphasis
from the Definition of Human Rights to Remedies for infringement of Human](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/ilr53&div=23&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Forcible Self-Help by States to Protect Human Rights
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