The military’s ECHR concerns
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
