ABSTRACT
The connection between human rights and humanitarian law must today be considered from two distinct viewpoints: first, analysis of the significance of humanitarian law with regard to the observance, promotion and defence of human rights: in other words, humanitarian law as it is today and as it is applied, and its contribution to the concrete existence of human rights and their observance as such in international and internal armed conflicts, within the framework of the provisions of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the Protocols of 1977; second, the relation between humanitarian law and human rights law as two distinct branches, sectors or aspects of modem international law.
