ABSTRACT
The invasion and occupation of Iraq have placed international law as a whole and human rights law in particular under extraordinary stress. In the face of brute and lawless force all normativity may appear to have evaporated from the international scene. Nevertheless, it is highly likely that in due course the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) will be called upon to adjudicate on complaints arising from the conduct of the United Kingdom, and possibly other European states of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’. My argument in this chapter is that significant normative and legal resources already exist in the jurisprudence of the ECtHR, and that through the cases decided over the years, especially the Chechen cases, a wholly positive clarification of the relationship between International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and International Human Rights Law (IHR) is already taking place. However, this process, on my account, can only be understood in the context of colonial and post-colonial armed struggles.
