The primacy of human rights as a core objective of the United Nations is encapsulated explicitly in article 103 of the UN Charter: “In the event of a conflict between the obligations of the Members of the United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail.”^[1] When any treaty is interpreted according to its “object and purpose” in line with article 31(1) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969), that object and purpose must cohere with, or at least not offend the purpose and principles embodied in the UN Charter that article 103 seeks to protect.^[2] Even when an international court is not called upon to interpret a treaty, it is still required to observe the coherence of the international legal system given both the peremptory norm status of article 103^[3] and the broad reading of that article’s reference to international agreements.

Although jurists and UN bodies have tried to classify certain rules, including rights and duties, with adjectives such as “inalienable, “inherent” or “fundamental,” these terms have not assumed precise legal meaning, but have influenced some tribunals’ interpretation of human rights and corresponding duties, including treaty obligations. Some eminent court opinions have supported the view that certain over-riding principles of international law form the body of jus cogens, or obligations of behavior that states owe to the entire international community as a whole. A principle of jus cogens is also considered a preemptory norm in international law.^[4] The ICJ has ruled that “such obligations derive, for example, in contemporary international law, from the outlawing of acts of aggression, and of genocide, as also from the principles and rules concerning the basic rights of the human person, including protection from slavery and racial discrimination.”^[5] Such rules cannot be diluted or superseded by an international treaty, but only by the codification of, or other means of establishing another countervailing norm. The UN Charter principles of nondiscrimination and self-determination, as well as crimes against humanity, fall into the category of jus cogens.^[6] As the International Law Commission accepted^[7] and the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969) affirms that “A treaty is void if, at the time of its conclusion, it conflicts with a peremptory norm of general international law.”^[8]

The least that can be said is that public international law has an effect on private international law^[9] and the relationship between the two disciplines involved public international law significantly governing private international law.^[10]