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inescapable, as enshrined, for example, in international humanitarian law (IHL), including the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005; the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC); and customary international law ( Brooks, 2015 ). On the other hand, the interview findings of this study reveal a widespread sense of frustration among aid workers over the perceived inefficacy of the law in practice for the protection of humanitarian action. Even in light of the existence of not only international courts and tribunals but
by this norm, at least over time, and consent to be bound by this aspirational principle. But it is not likely that the TPNW will evolve in the near future into even a process of customary international law, where those parties non-signatory to a particular treaty can be held accountable against that agreement. As legal observers note, customary international law can be argued
). The regulations laid down in both Hague Conventions on land warfare are by now considered customary international law and are thus binding on all states, even those not parties to these Conventions at the time (Schindler and Toman 1988 : 63). The 1899 Hague Conference also resulted in the drafting of the ‘Martens Clause’, reiterated at the 1907
intervention as a right of states or as customary international law is not only that it runs the risk of making conformity to the non-interventionist provisions of the UN Charter àla carte , but that it creates a climate in which the same quality of moral imperative can readily be directed to other purposes: for establishing democracy, ushering in human rights, or—as we have now seen—eliminating weapons of
interest’. One can also take the stance that any state, even those not party to the UNCLOS, can claim standing erga omnes in the collective interest being granted beyond the UNCLOS by way of customary international law (Wolfrum, 1983 : 312–27). Should a state ultimately be able to claim legal standing before a court ‘on behalf of mankind’ and claim reparations, the allocation
value in international relations, which for him is order, can only be guaranteed by states. The rights of both peoples and individuals have to lie in the communitarian system of a world of nation states signing treaties that are binding (Pacta sunt servanda), not in the ‘woolly’ recognition of non-binding norms, or so-called ‘customary’ international law. Against this classical ‘legalist’ view we have seen many examples of the feeling that the nation state is in many ways an obsolete concept and that other forms of organisation have to be attempted. The ideal of