Are human rights norms applicable to occupied territories in general, and to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in particular? The article examines the controversy that had arisen between Israel and the UN treaty monitoring bodies in relation to this question and critically analyzes Israel's three objections to such applicability: 1) the mutual exclusivity of humanitarian regime and human rights regime in occupied territories, the former being thus the only applicable law; 2) a restrictive interpretation of the jurisdictional provisions treaties; and 3) the lack of effective control in some of the territories. The article posits that the universal object and purpose of human rights treaties, which inform the proper interpretation of their jurisdictional clauses, require their applicability in all territories subject to the effective control of the state parties, as well as to other extra-territorial exercises of government power
During the last twenty years, the world has experienced a sharp rise in the number of international courts and tribunals, and a correlative expansion of their jurisdictions. These occurrences have dramatically affected and will continue to affect the fields of international law and international relations. The creation and operation of international judicial bodies that are capable of enforcing international commitments, interpreting international treaties, and settling international conflicts have facilitated the growth of international legal norms and cooperative regimes governing important areas of international law and politics, such as economic relations, human rights, and armed conflicts. International courts — understood in this article as independent judicial bodies created by international instruments and invested with the authority to apply international law to specific cases brought before them — have thus become important actors as well as policy instruments in the hands of international lawmakers. Such courts serve, in some respects, as the lynchpin of a new, rule-based international order, which increasingly displaces or purports to displace the previous power-based international order.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.