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Teka Commission of Legal Sciences Polish Academy of Sciences Branch in Lublin

Vol. 18 No. 2 (2025)

Articles

The Legality of Unilateral Measures in Reaction to Human Rights Violations Committed by a Third State Against Its Nationals

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32084/tkp.9767  [Google Scholar]
Published: 2025-12-29

Abstract

Currently, there is no universal international mechanism that would allow the international community to effectively react to flagrant human rights violations that a State commits against its own nationals. That is why States, aware of the shortcomings of the international legal system, often decide to unilaterally react to flagrant human rights violations committed in third States against the nationals of those States. In general, States can use two unilateral tools to react to violations of international law: retorsions and countermeasures. The question this raises is, however, whether they can also be used to address human rights violations as described above. The current paper is aimed at addressing this issue. The paper starts with general definitions of retorsions and countermeasures, and then moves on to discuss their applicability to cases of violations of human rights in third States committed against the nationals of those States.

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