Lawfare, the privatization of war and the new dynamics of armed conflicts: the relationship between IHL and Regional Human Rights Systems

On October 25, 1983, the United States, together with other countries, launched a military operation in Granada that deposed the revolutionary government led by Bernard Coard, then in power, as a result of a coup d'état against the Maurice Bishop’s administration. At the end of October, fourteen members of the revolutionary government and three soldiers, the Grenada 17 (G 17), were arrested and held prisoner by the US forces. On July 25, 1991, the G-17 filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. In the case that would become known as Coard v. USA (number 10.951, Report 109/99) they alleged, during the arrest and imprisonment of G 17, the violation of articles 1, 2; 15, 17, 18 26 of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, The final, the Inter-American Commission, pronounced, among other matters, the violation of some precepts of that Declaration and the relationship between International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law. In this regard and also taking into consideration: a) the political nature of war and international law; b) the privatization of the war sector through the use of military and private security companies; c) the scarce existing legal regulations; e) the phenomenon of Lawfare as the instrumental use of legal mechanisms to obtain military advantages and d) the new dynamics of armed conflicts involving cyber-war, the use of unmanned vehicles and intelligent armaments, and the growing participation of non-state actors, we intend to ask how Regional Human Rights Systems, in general, can help in the implementation of the rights to life; equality, freedom and personal security; prohibition of arbitrary arrests and access to a regular judicial process during an armed conflict.