In the Bangladesh crisis, two important objectives of international law appeared to be in conflict: that of peace and that of justice. The former objective is set out in the rules of the U.N. Charter against the use of force by states except in self-defense against an armed attack. The second is found in the provisions of the Charter and in various resolutions, declarations, and covenants pertaining to fundamental human rights and self determination.

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THIS article briefly canvasses a small number of International Court of Justice cases in which the Court has addressed human rights issues. From this it emerges that the Court has unambiguously accepted that the obligation to respect fundamental human rights is an obligation found in general international law. Questions may, however, remain as to: (1) whether all the human rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are equally binding; (2) whether the content of all the rights may be equally discoverable; and (3) how far the rights may be protected or implemented apart from such measures as particular human rights treaties may themselves provide. One measure of implementation that is clearly not allowed is unilateral resort to armed force by one State to adjust the human rights situation in another State (the doctrine of humanitarian intervention). The cases in question are the advisory opinions on Reservations to the Genocide Convention 1 and on Namibia* and the decisions in the contentious cases in SouthWest Africa, 3 Barcelona Traction, 4 US Diplomatic and Consular Staff in Tehran, 5 and Military Activities in Nicaragua. 6 I shall treat the earlier cases, much pored over already, in less detail than the last one. * Head of Legal and InterGovernmental Organisations Office, Amnesty International; part-time lecturer in law, London School of Economics and Political Science. This is a revised version of a paper read to the British Branch of the International Law Association in Oxford on 9 May 1987. The views it contains are those of the author and are not to be attributed to any organisation. 321 (1989) 38 I.C.L.Q. 7. [1951] I.CJ. Rep. 15, 23 (emphasis added). 8. Idem,p.2A. 9. The Convention was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 Dec. 1948: G. A. Res.260A (HI). The Court handed down its opinion on 28 May 1951. 10. Art.6, Charter of the International Military Tribunal annexed to the Agreement for the Establishment of an International Military Tribunal, concluded at London, 8 Aug. 1945: 5 U.N.T.S. 251. The judgment of the tribunal (1946) is reproduced in (1947) 41 A.J.I.L. 172. APRIL 1989] Human Rights and the ICJ 323 has confirmed and elaborated on with greater precision what it said in this case about the legal prohibition of genocide.

There are two broad clusters of United Nations human rights machinery: those set up under international human rights treaties (treaty bodies) and those established by the UN Commission on Human Rights (special procedures). They are compared and contrasted, in terms of their potential for duplication and the cooperation or competition attendant on it. The two clusters are distinguished from the perspective of their implicit purposes (mainly multilateral for special procedures, mainly bilateral for treaty bodies) and working methods (examined in terms of general country work, case-specific work, and general overview activity). The incidence of direct cooperation is also addressed. The article concludes that the possibilities of duplication are not as numerous as might be expected, they are generally avoidable or can be accommodated administratively where they exist and that, on balance, the clusters perform complementary functions.