The military's ECHR concerns
Daniel Korski 6:56pm
Earlier this week, there was a European Court of Human
Rights ruling that is worth dwelling on. To summarise: the Court held that the UK's human rights obligations apply to its acts in Iraq, and that the UK had violated the European Convention on
Human Rights in its failure to adequately investigate the killing of five Iraqi civilians by its forces there. The judgment overturns a House of Lords majority ruling four years ago that there was
no UK human rights jurisdiction regarding the deaths.
The obligation on soldiers to protect the vulnerable during military operations is not, of course, new. It underlies the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (as well as their predecessors and Additional Protocols of 1977). Thus, soldiers have had a duty to protect civilians for years. Indeed, the UK has been a party to the European Convention on Human Rights since it came into operation in 1953, and the conduct of soldiers in Northern Ireland has been considered by the Court on a number of occasions.
But this is quite an important ruling, as the British government will be pressured by activists to accept that human rights law applies to its acts anywhere in the world. The government on the other hand will argue that the case was unique, as the court itself admitted when it talked about the "exceptional circumstances" that governed post-Saddam Iraq; circumstances that established a “jurisdictional link” between the UK and the six people that were killed.
Nonetheless, many in the Ministry of Defence fear a deluge of claims from people wronged during UK military operations. Some time ago the Ministry set up an independent unit — the Historic Allegations Team — to investigate allegations of wrongdoing, and officials fear that a number of the cases could now find their way into the courts and eventually the ECHR.
There is an additional concern: will activists now try to extend the ruling even further, arguing that the European Convention extends the right to life to British soldiers too? Suppose an order is given to "fight to the last man". This may happen more often in war films than in reality, but what if the actions of a superior lead to the deaths of soldiers through enemy action? Could the government now be sued, possibly all the way to the European Court? If so, the effect on command inside the military could be devastating. As an officer told me, “it might reduce us to a Belgian army.”
It may be time to add the military to the growing list of those who are worried about the impact of the ECHR and the Human Rights Act on Britain.
Previous
John Goode
July 9th, 2011 7:12pm Report this commentArmed forces personnel are aware of the risks they face when they sign up. (I speak as a former soldier)
There is sometimes a genuine issue of negligence by placing unnecessary risk but the average soldier knows that there is risk of death or injury in the armed force. The ECHR seems to be on a bid to extend it's jurisdiction.
Shouldn't the question be: Who does the ECHR answer to?
Walsingham's Ghost
July 9th, 2011 7:18pm Report this commentAnd still Cameron doesn't have the 'cojones' to stand-up the the EU.
Hurry up and go bankrupt, Greece - we are relying on you to bring the whole EU edifice crashing down, as our Government appears utterly incapable of standing up to it...
WG.
pharbitis
July 9th, 2011 7:29pm Report this comment'Who does the ECHR answer to?'
Or - who does the ECHR think it is? What experience or warfare does it have
Have it's judges been chosen by anyone I had an opportunity to vote for? Having seen the brief CVs of the judges in a newspaper article recently, I'd not trust them to judge a flower show.
Colin
July 9th, 2011 7:50pm Report this comment@John Goode
July 9th, 2011 7:12pm
"Armed forces personnel are aware of the risks they face when they sign up. "
Do you think they're fully aware of the legal risks? I think not...
I think if they were openly informed that things they do, in the heat of battle, under extreme stress, may come back to haunt them years later, might force some of our young men and women to think again before taking the Queen's shilling. Especially when they're made aware of the fact that the political crooks who send them to fight won't back them.
ndm
July 9th, 2011 8:04pm Report this commentGiven that all three were responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the only question that George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein and Tony Blair should need worry about today is who gets the middle bunk.
Bush and Blair led an occupation with willful disregard for the rights of the Iraqi people - a willful disregard that resulted in the deaths of many of them. It is time we held both these men accountable for their crimes. We betray ourselves when we fail to hold them accountable.
TrevorsDen
July 9th, 2011 8:18pm Report this commentThank you |Mr Ghost - you are the latest to display your unutterably thicko ignorance - the ECHR has nothing to do with the EU. we were one of its founder members in 1950. It came from the Council for Europe.
It beggars belief that you can formulate your vitriol on such pathetic ignorance.
As for the topic - this ruling is plain preposterous. One wonders if its members have links to the lawyers make millions out of its judgement. Perhaps someone should hack their voice mails.
ndm
July 9th, 2011 8:18pm Report this commentColin writes:
-- Do you think they're fully aware of the legal risks? I think not...
This question came up many times in the US during the Iraqi conflict and the answer always given was that soldiers ARE given training about their legal responsibilities during a conflict. Of course, they almost never face legal consequences for any transgression - regardless of how heinous it is.
kKayani
July 9th, 2011 8:39pm Report this commentWhy killing is a option ? Why are fighting for ?
Mirtha Tidville
July 9th, 2011 9:45pm Report this commentThe best way to deal with this `Kangaroo Court` is to ignore it and for `Dave` to say so publically...will he?????????...answers on a postcard please
Baron
July 9th, 2011 10:35pm Report this commenthave said it before, am saying it again, how could anyone volunteer for soldiering today is beyond me, it feels our boys in uniform face greater threat from the law when they get back than from the enemy on the firing line. Lunacy.
ndm, if you don’t mind my asking, why have you excluded the messiah from those who should squabble which bunk to occupy; he didn’t start anything, true, but didn’t he escalate the inherited conflict in the lands of the Afghans, and how many have your soldiers killed since?
also, Bush was fighting two wars, if memory serves, will you remind me how many wars is fighting the one whose name you’ve omitted? It was six yesterday, time flies though, it may be seven today.
Baron
July 9th, 2011 10:57pm Report this commentColin @ 7.50:
I reckon you have it about right, only a paper pusher may come up with the idea of judging a soldier after the event, they know not what it must be like to encounter an enemy face to face, either the one or the other survives. Is it in Henry VI (if it isn’t, I apologize in advance) where the bard says: “the first thing we do is kill all the lawyers”?
ndm
July 10th, 2011 3:02am Report this commentBaron writes:
-- ndm, if you don’t mind my asking, why have you excluded the messiah from those who should squabble which bunk to occupy; he didn’t start anything, true, but didn’t he escalate the inherited conflict in the lands of the Afghans, and how many have your soldiers killed since?
Baron should remember that forces allied with and supported by the government of Afghanistan attacked the United States on the 11th of September, 2001. Regardless of how well it was planned and executed, the current mission in Afghanistan is a response to that attack. By contrast, the attack on Iraq was by choice not necessity.
Jan Cosgrove
July 10th, 2011 3:12am Report this commentYou would hardly think from many of the comments that the UK voluntarily signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights and the jurisdiction of its Court. The ECHR is concerned, as it should be, with the rule of law. Its provisions are all expressions of the fundamentals of the rule of law. That rule, if it is that rule, brooks no difference no matter what country one is in. If we abide by that rule then when we fight a war in someone else's country, do we not take it with us to apply it to our actions? Never mind wriggling out of being accountable under that rule of law, we of all people, all nations surely should be the flag bearers. The UK Supreme Court ruling was not a unanimous decision and the ECHR came to another conclusion. The UK gave it that authority along with all the other signatories. The HRA 1998 incorporated parts of the Convention into UK law, but left our Parliament with final say on response, if any, to the rulings of the Court or indeed Declarations of Incompatibility made in our own courts by virtue of the HRA. It is for our elected MPs to respond, not Cameron, to fashion laws, if need be, or even a justifiable derogation. The military can make proper representations providing these also uphold the rule of law.
fred
July 10th, 2011 8:05am Report this commentThe ECHR is not judicial it is political as are all such supposedly public organisations. It is ruled by the same people that rule the EU and British establishment.
Severe change is required to root this one out, out of the EU and out of Britain. We need national governments that can service national needs.
David
July 10th, 2011 8:10am Report this commentUnder the ECHR are our armed forces actually allowed to shoot any body?
In the case of Iraq , weren't our forces opperating as NATO troops not British?
Is NATO signed up to the ECHR ?
Who are the ECHR set up to Protect ? Ask the starveing in the Horn of Africa about Human Rights. They don't have Food or Water.
Surely these are real Human Rights?
Baron
July 10th, 2011 8:49am Report this commentndm says in support of the one who said one thing before taking office, has been doing other since: "…the attack on Iraq was by choice not necessity.”
so give us an outline of what you would say to families, relatives, friends of those boiled in oil, gassed by Sadam, would it include a sentence ‘we had a choice to help or turn the other way, we decided to turn the other way?’
In 1945, your military dropped a couple of atom bombs over two Japanese cities killing in the blast (and after) 250,000 people. Since then, Japan has never threatened anyone, has contributed to the living standard of the world handsomely.
Seven years after Hiroshima, Nagasaki, your military were fighting the North Korean communist thugs, could have also deployed the bomb (no other country could have, the Moscow based Red Menace had the thing, didn’t have the delivery system), but didn’t. As a consequence, the number of the North Korean unwashed killed by the regime runs into tens of millions, the country cannot feed itself.
You follow?
Clynt Keelan
July 10th, 2011 9:32am Report this comment'...the growing list of people worried about the impact of ECHR on Britain'.
Yeah - like it's some crazy Euro rules being imposed by Bureaucrats.
Remember what the Convention On Human Rights is FOR? To protect Human Rights. The fact that so many moral cowards here think that the Army should be exempt is proof that they believe the Army should be free to terrorize and murder foreign nationals if it is deemed to be in our National interest.
The ECHR isn't there to 'hamper' the army. It's there to represent the millions of voiceless civilians dead, blown up, grieving their families, disappeared, tortured or left homeless. If it turns out that our armed services have been responsible for wrongdoing then they must be held accountable - the kids with the assault rifles, the middle-aged psychos whipping them along, and the smiling bloodstained politicians chuckling over their backhanders in Westminster. Otherwise we're no better than gangsters.
TrevorsDen
July 10th, 2011 9:58am Report this commentYes human rights - what about the human rights of the people illegally used as human shields by the illegal terrorist who illegally do not wear uniforms.
What about the human rights of people illegally blown up by illegal terrorists?
We abide by the Geneva Convention, terrorists break it every time they get out of bed in the morning.
The report says we did not investigate some deaths properly - it does not say we deliberately targeted civilians .
Will from Bradford
July 10th, 2011 3:03pm Report this commentIf we dare to think the UK more civilised than some of the war-torn countries our soldiers are deployed in, then we are obliged to abide by the conventions and laws that we ratified to protect civilians. We should not aspire to be terrorists as some thoroughly disgusting people here have suggested.
Anyone who believes that the life of a solider is worth more than a civilian has no moral compass.
Baron
July 10th, 2011 4:30pm Report this commentWill from Bradford:
In principle, one wuld be hard put to fault your argument, but as I keep pointing out the Great Edmund Burke had it that principles should only inform our behaviour, not rule it to the exclusion of conditions, circumstances.
I happen to know well someone who’s been to Afghanistan, the problem, he says, is you never know whether the guy you’re facing is a friend or foe, no uniform, no distinct pointers one way, the other, no nothing to tell you he the former, the latter.
tell us, if you will, what would you do if you were come face to face with men dressed the way they do there, looking furtively at you, you knowing that the day before your comrade got killed in similar circumstances. Would you quietly recite for yourself whatever the ECHR guidance you were given says, or what?
Fritz
July 23rd, 2011 1:10am Report this commentWell, why not say that the ECHR is just another piece of PIL? Did anybody ever care about the illegality of a war of aggression? Yes, some did. The ECHR means that the army will have to act like a police. In all cases, the bombing of a radio station included. Wasnt it absurd to claim that a bomb is no iurisdiction?
Back to top