The Martens Clause and its implications for the Special Jurisdiction for Peace

Abstract

The purpose of this text is to briefly describe the origins, evolution, and scope of the Martens Clause at the international and national levels, making a historical, jurisprudential, and doctrinal study of the normative provision. It may be established that, although it does not impose autonomous sources of law on IHL, it does impose a mandatory interpretative criterion in cases where the rules of IHL are lax or where there are apparent gaps, since the requirements of humanity must always be respected and applied, and the interpretation of the rules of IHL must be carried out strictly, in some cases taking into account the developments of international human rights standards. The mandate of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SIP) to take into consideration the clause for the qualification of conducts under its jurisdiction, especially those that may constitute war crimes, will also be presented. To this end, two emblematic cases decided by the International Criminal Court and the sip will be presented, in which the clause has proven to be a key element in determining whether conduct such as intra-party sexual violence and attacks to the environment are war crimes.

Alrededor de este texto se buscará brevemente señalar los orígenes, la evolución y los alcances dados a la Cláusula Martens a nivel internacional y nacional, haciéndose un estudio histórico, jurisprudencial y doctrinal de la disposición normativa. Pudiendo establecerse que esta, aunque no imponga fuentes de derecho autónomas en el Derecho Internacional Humanitario (DIH), sí impone un criterio interpretativo obligatorio en casos donde las reglas del DIH son laxas o hay aparentes vacíos, pues siempre se deben respetar y aplicar los requisitos de humanidad, y la interpretación de las reglas del DIH se debe realizar de forma estricta atendiendo en algunos casos a los desarrollos de los estándares internacionales de derechos humanos (DD. HH.).