ABSTRACT
The concept of ‘international human rights’ has brought about a revolution in the discipline of international law since 1945. That revolution has challenged much of the pre-1945 international law order in which the doctrine of ‘nonintervention’ had developed into something approaching a fundamental principle. An examination of the relationship between the two doctrines will reveal that they were developed to protect rather different interests. International human rights developed to protect the interests of individuals and groups, minorities and peoples. Non-intervention developed historically (in Latin America) as a protection for states from the involvement in their affairs of other states. Within the concept of non-intervention there is a subconcept of ‘domestic jurisdiction’. This concept serves a different purpose again. It seeks to delineate the line of jurisdiction between matters of international law and matters of domestic law. The different purposes served by the different doctrines leads to varying degrees of complexity when their relationships are considered. This complexity is heightened because developments in one concept have tended to have a corresponding effect on the interests protected by the other concepts, and ultimately on the other concepts themselves.
