HASSAN v. THE UNITED KINGDOM – JUDGMENT 47 Convention in no sense indicated that, in time of war or public emergency threatening the life of the nation, obligations under the Convention would at all times be interpreted in exactly the same way as in peacetime. Any argument that, unless there had been a derogation under Article 15, Article 5 should be interpreted and applied regardless of the context and the detailed rules of international humanitarian law governing detention of suspected combatants would risk diminishing the protections available to combatants or civilians (in effect, by precipitating derogations by concerned States). It would also be inconsistent with a seemingly universal State practice in terms of the detention of actual or suspected combatants in international armed conflicts, as well as the jurisprudence of the Court and the International Court of Justice, which had made it clear that the application of international humanitarian law as lex specialis was a general principle, and not one that depended on whether there had been a derogation under an applicable human rights treaty. (c) The third party 91. In the third party submissions filed in the present case, the Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex emphasised that, as the Court had held in its case-law, the Convention should be interpreted in harmony with other rules of public international law, of which it forms part. Such a principle was desirable and necessary, to avoid States being faced with irreconcilable legal obligations and controversial results. This was particularly important with relation to the detention regime applicable in international armed conflicts, since this regime was specifically designed for the situation in question and since the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions enjoyed universal ratification. There was one sentence in the Court’s judgment in Al-Jedda v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 27021/08, § 107, ECHR 2011, which might be read as suggesting that the Court would only take account of international humanitarian law where it imposed an obligation, and not where it authorised a course of conduct, namely where it was stated: “... the Court does not find it established that international humanitarian law places an obligation on an Occupying Power to use indefinite internment without trial”. However, it was the view of the third party that, in the context of the judgment, it appeared that the Court was not looking at international humanitarian law in its own right but as a source of possible rules which could be read into a Security Council resolution. The United Kingdom Government could have chosen to raise international humanitarian law as an independent basis for detention but chose instead to rely exclusively on the Security Council resolution. The sentence quoted from Al-Jedda did not indicate that the Court would take account of international humanitarian law only where it imposed an obligation on States.