I.  INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW AND INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW IN ARMED CONFLICT: LEGAL SOURCES, PRINCIPLES AND ACTORS in hostilities, while at the same time limiting the violence to the extent necessary to weaken the military potential of the enemy. Both in limiting the violence and in regulating the treatment of persons affected by armed conflict in other respects, international humanitarian law strikes a balance between humanity and military necessity. While on the face of it, the rules of international human rights law and international humanitarian law are very different, their substance is very similar and both protect individuals in similar ways. The most important substantive difference is that the protection of international humanitarian law is largely based on distinctions—in particular between civilians and combatants—unknown in international human rights law.  1. Protected rights International humanitarian law is traditionally formulated in terms of objective rules of conduct for States and armed groups, while international human rights law is expressed in terms of subjective rights of the individual vis-à-vis the State. Today, an increasing number of rules of international humanitarian law, in particular fundamental guarantees for all persons in the power of a party to a conflict and rules of international humanitarian law in non-international armed conflict, are formulated in terms of subjective rights, e.g., the right of persons whose liberty has been restricted to receive individual or collective relief or the right of families to know the fate of their relatives. Conversely, subjective rights have been translated by United Nations General Assembly resolutions into rules of conduct for State officials. For instance, the Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, adopted at the Eighth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders in 1990, provide an authoritative interpretation of the principles authorities must respect when using force in order not to infringe the right to life, and they direct, inter alia, law enforcement officials to “give a clear warning of their intent to use firearms, with sufficient time for the warning to be observed, unless to do so would unduly place the law enforcement officials at risk or would create a risk of death or serious 15

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