But that is one of the basic principles of international humanitarian law.’Īn elderly couple walks down a street in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, where the bodies of over 300 of the town’s residents were discovered after the Russian withdrawal.Ī thorough investigation is important not only for holding a country like Russia accountable and convicting war criminals but also for the country’s democratic process and even its historiography. Tan: ‘Unless there is a political shift in Russia, it is highly unlikely that the country will investigate its own armed forces. If so, the state must be held responsible and the perpetrators prosecuted and punished.

Then there has to be a legal analysis of whether international law has been violated. Political shift neededĪ fact-finding mission must establish exactly what happened. This obliges the country to investigate its own military action, for example in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, where hundreds of civilian victims were found after the withdrawal of Russian troops. Russia is a party to the Geneva Conventions and – for now at least – to the European Convention on Human Rights as well as to other international human rights treaties, says Tan. ‘That there is a war doesn’t mean people no longer have human rights, so violations must also be investigated and primarily by the country that has deployed its armed forces.’ This also applies to human rights violations. ‘What I show in my thesis is that under international humanitarian law states are obliged to investigate violations of that law,’ says Tan.

‘That there is war doesn’t mean people no longer have human rights’ - Floris Tan Moreover, human rights only apply in peacetime it is claimed.

For example, a frequent argument is that international humanitarian law does not create an obligation to investigate and that violations of human rights during armed conflict do not have to be investigated because that would be too demanding in times of war.

According to Tan, states often hide behind ambiguity in the law to escape an awkward investigation.

The law of armed conflict