58 INTERNATIONAL LEGAL PROTECTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ARMED CONFLICT the context of hostilities, both bodies of law seek to provide protection to these persons and often provide a similar response to particular situations. Nevertheless, in certain exceptional cases, international human rights law and international humanitarian law may offer contradictory solutions. For example, as will be discussed below, the amount of deadly force that may be used against a person is regulated differently in international human rights law and in international humanitarian law. International law has therefore foreseen a number of mechanisms of legal interpretation that would help to decide how two apparently conflicting norms should be read together and, if that proves impossible, which would have pre-eminence. As will be explained in the next section, one such mechanism is the socalled principle of lex specialis derogat legi generali, according to which, in cases of a conflict of norms, the more specific rule is applied over the more general rule. Yet, other mechanisms, such as the principles of lex posterior derogat legi priori85 or interprétation conforme, could also be applied to determine how two seemingly conflicting rules can be applied to a given situation or, if necessary, which of the two rules should be applied. 2. International human rights law, international humanitarian law and the principle of lex specialis As indicated above, international human rights law and international humanitarian law apply concurrently in situations of armed conflict, with their different protections complementing each other. However, there could be instances in which international human rights law and international humanitarian law regulate the same situation in a different manner, yielding different results. In such cases of conflict of norms, international practice has established that, failing other means to interpret both norms in conformity, one of the principles of interpretation of norms that could be applied is that of lex specialis.   The principle that new laws are, generally, given preference over previous ones is a principle of law that has been codified in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (art. 30). 85