La Cour internationale de justice et la problématique des droits de l'homme

Paragraph 2 : The problem of the interference

We will define initially the concept of interference (A), before seeing on the matter the intervention of the Court (B).

A- Definition

Since the States exist, they intervene in their neighbor and, inevitably, they endeavor to justify their failure with the principle of non-interference by the existence of one departures from the rule whose traditional expression would be the admissibility of « interventions of humanity » with the profit of their own nationals or certain categories of people sharing with them values common and oppressed by a foreign State, or being the massive and repeated violations humans right. But that the right says on this subject and which is the contribution of the International Court of Justice on this subject ?

The interference does not indicate a given legal concept, in the literature of the international law. Under this denomination, the works rather treat intervention, action of a State or an international organization which aims to the examination and the solution of a business coming under the responsibility of one or several other States. The terminological proximity is due to the definition of the interference to the common direction. It means the action there to be involved unduly, without in being required or having the right of it, in the businesses of others.

Article 2 paragraph 7 of the Charter of the United Nations, lays out on this subject that « no provision of this Charter authorizes the United Nations to intervene in businesses which primarily come under the national responsibility of a State nor does not oblige the members to subject businesses of this kind to a procedure of payment under the present Charter... «.

Therefore, the International Court of Justice in the business of the Strait of Corfou on April 9, 1949, sanctioned the internationally illicit act which consisted, for the United Kingdom-, to intervene in Albanian territorial waters to proceed to a mine clearance whose object was to ensure it a navigation without danger for the human lives. The problem of the interference causes often conflict, but can cause also peace, all depends on the reasons which animate the State or the organization which is involved. The International Court of Justice contributed in a decisive way to the legal establishment of certain legal bases which make it possible to intervene with an aim of promoting safety, international pacification and the protection of the humans right.

« The humans right constitute certainly a noble reason for intervention but they raise multiple questions as those of the methods (the end justifies the means), of the selectivity (political two-speed) or the direction (universality reduced to the Western values) of the action. One sees as well as the action of the international community is registered on the plan of the procedures, in dialectical legality/legitimacy whereas, on the plan of the values, it does not escape the suspicions to deal with certain States while others would be  resolutely in margin of the international relations »^147(*).

* ¹⁴⁷Philippe CHRESTIA  :  «  The influence of the humans right on the evolution of the contemporary international law  », RTDH n° 40,  1999, p. 723.