States of Emergency - Centre for Policy Alternatives

Moreover, human rights norms during states of emergency have
also been the subject of several standard setting exercises, notably
the Paris
Minimum
Standards
of
Human
Rights
Norms
in
a
State
of
Emergency
 (Paris Minimum Standards) 184 and the Siracusa
Principles
 on
 the
 Limitation
 and
 Derogation
 Provisions
 in
 the
International
 Covenant
 on
 Civil
 and
 Political
 Rights
 (Siracusa
Principles). 185 While these are informal and strictly speaking
legally non‐binding, they enjoy wide acceptance as setting the
international standards on human rights during emergencies and
as interpretive guides to States.
We see that international human rights law comports with the
models of accommodation in Gross and Ní Aoláin’s analytical
typology we introduced at the outset. 186 That is, by the
extrapolation of the rule of law ideal into international law,
international human rights law seeks to legally regulate the reach
and limits of substantive rights as well as derogations, the latter
primarily (but not exclusively) through procedural requirements.
Derogation clauses in international human rights law can thus be
described as the analogue of states of emergency frameworks in
constitutional models of accommodation in municipal law.
Needless to say, other views exist about the theoretical basis of
derogation provisions, including the view that they are an
184
Richard B. Lillich (1985) ‘Paris
Minimum
Standards
of
Human
Rights
Norms
in
a
State
of
Emergency’, Vol.79, No.4 (October, 1985): pp.
1072‐1081
185
United Nations, Economic and Social Council, U.N. Sub‐Commission on
Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities (1984)
‘Siracusa
Principles
on
the
Limitation
and
Derogation
of
Provisions
in
the
International
Covenant
on
Civil
and
Political
Rights’, Annex, UN Doc E/CN.
4/1984/4 (1984)
186
See Chapter 2, supra
113