Moving Forward on the Development of Minimum Humanitarian Standards

Abstract

Regular readers of this Journal will be familiar with the idea of developing a set of minimum humanitarian standards to provide greater protection of human rights in situations of internal conflict. The idea was first put forward in 1983 by Professor Theodor Meron as both a necessary and an effective means of closing the gap in legal protection that exists in internal conflicts that fall outside the scope of applicability of international humanitarian law, and where human rights norms might be insufficient. The idea became more concrete in 1990 with the adoption of the Declaration on Minimum Humanitarian Standards in Turku/Åbo, Finland, now often referred to as the “Turku Declaration,” by a group of experts convened by the Institute for Human Rights at Abo Akademi University.