Human Rights and armed conflicts

At first glance these two terms may seem contradictory. War is the most extreme context of human rights violations, suggesting that they have a fundamentally antagonistic relationship and that one is the negation of the other. War violates rights, while rights require peace and hence the absence of war. Despite this appearance, however, war is not a state of lawlessness where all is permitted, but rather a regulated, codified space. There is a question of human rights in war and we obviously denounce their violation, but the violation of rules is not proof of their absence. There is another question of human rights before war, since certain conflicts are justified by the protection of the local population's rights, or the "rights of humanity" as a cause for action. This article summarises the relations between human rights and armed conflicts in four sections : firstly from a historical perspective, focusing on their reciprocity (war's role in the evolution of human rights and the role of human rights in the evolution of war). The next sections follow the trinity of the ethics of war : war in the name of human rights (jus ad bellum), human rights in war (jus in bello) and, to conclude, post-war human rights (jus post bellum).