Is international law binding when it relates to human rights violations?

To answer this question, we must start by defining “international law”. As indicated by the two words of this category of law, international law consists of rules and principles that govern relations, interactions, and conflict resolutions among nation-states. While a national law, generally governs the relations among people within a single nation-state, making legal persons within a national border the subject of a national law; States are the subjects of International law. As such, it mainly addresses cross-border matters such as trade, war rights, environmental rights, human rights, diplomacy, air and marine navigation, and war crimes.Substantively, the main sources of international law (IL) are multilateral treaties and conventions, judicial decisions by courts, scholarly findings, customary law, and jurisprudence—with the latter consisting of universal principles maxims that inform the making of laws. The same way a national law might be subdivided into branches of law, international law can be grouped into major areas of law including international economic law (IEL), international security law (ISL), international criminal law (ICL), diplomatic law (DL), and international humanitarian law (IHL). Although human rights issues are generally covered un international human humanitarian law, the growing interest, increased number of institutions, and the increased legal cases specifically focused on human rights, all contributed to the emerging branch of international law called international human rights law (IHRL). While national law are enforced by the executive branch of a national government using armed security forces, the world community does not have an executive branch or armed security forces of its own. The closest analogous entity to an executive branch of a global government is the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The lack of a UNSC armed forces structure made application of international law a matter of compliance, not enforcement—. In practice, only superpowered States may rely on an international law provision and use its own armed forces to “enforce” the law.In terms of juridical institutions, international law is adjudicated through tribunals and international courts. While tribunals are often created to adjudicate specific case and dissolve thereafter, permanent courts play a major role in upholding international order. There are two key international courts: the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the of the International Criminal Court (ICC). While the ICJ adjudicates cases among States (civil), the ICC adjudicate criminal cases and tries individuals accused of crimes that fall under four broad categories, aggression, crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.Having defined and introduced international law and international legal institutions, we now try to answer the specific question: are UNSC resolutions related to human rights issues binding?The most recent UNSC resolution ordering a ceasefire in Gaza was characterized by the US administration as non-bonding; thus, the question, aren’t UNSC resolution binding? The short answer is yes, UNSC resolutions are binding. That is one of the reasons powerful States, the Permanent 5 (P5), have a veto power to prevent the Council from issuing an order that would impact them in ways they do not wish to impacted. However, given the absence of a UN’s own military force that can be dispatched to enforce its orders, UNSC resolutions are enforceable only if some powerful State decides to act on the order. However, nation-states may take actions that they would consider within their obligation to “agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.” (Article 25).To provide a more detailed answer to the question, however, we could start with the most recent event in the longstanding Palestinian-Israeli conflict of which the recent war in Gaza is just one episode of many.On October 7, Hamas (and other armed groups and individuals) launched an attack on Israeli settlements on the other side of the security fence around Gaza. Hamas justified its attack by appealing to self-defense principle, accusing Israel of violating the rights of Palestinians and illegally imprisoning Palestinian people. Hamas claimed that the purpose of the attack was to take Israelis as prisoners and trade them for Palestinian prisoners and for negotiating a settlement that would prevent Israel from continuing to occupy and settle Palestinian land, violating the rights of Palestinians in Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza, and from denying the Palestinian people the right to resist occupation.Israel responded to Hamas’ attack by, first, air bombardment campaign that levels entire neighborhoods, by cutting off food, water, medicine, and electricity (as ordered by Israel official, Gallat), and then launched a ground invasion of Gaza. Israel and its Western allies justified the counterattack as self-defense—a counterclaim of self-defense of sort as well. Under international law, Israel has the right to defend itself. In most cases, the invocation of self-defense justification is rooted in universal customary laws, which is enshrined in modern international law, as expressed in Chapter VII, Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security. – UN Charter, Chapter VII, Article 51.

If Israel is relying on an international law doctrine to respond to the Oct. 7 attack, Israel is then under the obligation to carry out its response within the limits of international law, and not use indiscriminate and disproportionate force, as expressed specifically in International Humanitarian Law (IHL).Among the functions of the IHL is the protection of persons who are not, or are no longer, directly, or actively engaged in hostilities. As the framework governing armed conflicts, IHL imposes limits on the means, methods, and instruments of warfare. This means, that Israel as a member of the UN, is under the obligation to “agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present [UN] Charter.” In this sense, the UNSC resolution is binding, and compliance is expected. However, State’s rarely accept the dictates of outside actors, especially when they are engaged in armed conflict. Therefore, it falls on the shoulders of the outside world, the UNSC and UN members states, to ensure compliance.Ordinarily, when the UNSC finds that compliance is absent, it may produce new resolutions imposing sanctions and embargoes under the authority of Article 41 and Article 42 to coerce compliance; and the UNSC may escalate if necessary to allow the use of force under the authority of Article 46.International law is not the only authority that moves a State or even non-State entity to act. Because the power of international law is derived from universal moral and ethical principles, a State may take unilateral action that can be considered as falling under their obligation to “agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.” Powerful nation-states, especially, have used this reasoning to invade other countries or provide military and economic assistance to another State or to armed groups fighting another state.The US government, for instance, when it failed to secure a UNSC resolution authorizing the use of force against the Iraqi government, invoked national security (self-defense), the need to support the “oppressed Kurdish people”, as well as the unsubstantiated claim of the existence of weapons of mass destruction program to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003.More recently, US and Western governments provided billions in economic and military aid, including direct delivery of weapon systems, to Ukraine, arguing that Ukraine was attacked by Russia and there is an obligation to help Ukraine defend itself, although there was no UN resolution ordering Russia to stop its special military operation in Ukraine.In the case of this war in Gaza, given the legal finding by the ICJ that Israel is carrying out a “plausible genocide in Gaza,” ordering the state of Israel to provide food and water, and given the approval of a UNSC resolution ordering a ceasefire in Gaza and delivery of aid to civilians in all of Gaza, there is legal and moral ground for any nation-state to take all measures to bring about full compliance with the ICJ and UNSC orders. However, what some Western governments have done is quite the opposite: the US government is delivering more weapons, the power of which far exceeds what is needed to fight poorly supplied armed groups in Gaza, violating the proportionality of the use of force in IHL covering armed conflict. Interestingly, the only “government” that seems to follow the UNSC and ICJ orders is the Sanaa government in Yemen (Houthis), which declared an economic embargo on Israel until “it stops its aggression against Palestinians and until aid is allowed into Gaza.” Ironically, US and a few Western governments launched military operations to punish the Sanaa government for doing what the UNSC and the ICJ calls for.The armed conflict in Gaza and the human rights abuses it unleashed, compared to other ongoing conflicts or past conflicts, bring to the forefront the limits and flaws of international law and international institutions, and underscores the need for a more equitable global order and new determinant systems that will reduce harm and remediate human rights offenses.