Turku/Åbo Declaration of Minimum Humanitarian Standards (1990)

Abstract

The origins to the Turku Declaration can be traced back to the results of the Diplomatic Conference that by 1977 drafted the two Protocols to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The adoption of Protocol II, seeking to address non-international armed conflicts, coincided with the entry into force of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1976. A comparison of the resulting frameworks of international humanitarian law and human rights law led many observers to the conclusion that there was a protection gap in respect of situations that did not amount to an armed conflict in the meaning of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, or of Protocol II of 1977, but nevertheless allowed states to declare a state of emergency and to resort to the derogation clauses in the ICCPR and certain other human rights treaties.