Protection of the Right to Life under Modern International Law and Prophetic Law: A Comparative Study

Abstract

The right to life is often said to be mother right and most important fundamen-tal right of all rights. The application and criteria of protection of the right to life differs under international humanitarian law (IHL) and human rights law (HRL). As a general conception, IHL is applicable only during armed conflict and HRL is applicable in all other situations excepting armed conflict. This conception though has been proved to be wrong, however, the primary concern regarding the protection of the right to life during armed conflict is that of IHL. However, it does not mean that HRL has nothing to do with an armed conflict or IHL is having no concern about the protection of the right to life beyond armed conflict, rather it means that standard and criteria of protection of the right to life during armed conflict differs in both these branches of internatio-nal. When the question arises with regard to the protection of the right to life during armed conflict, different answers are found in both these disciplines. The substantive law as well as case law of both the branches differ in this regard to such an extent that a person may lose the protection of his right to life under IHL on the one hand, while still holding such protection under HRL on the other. While Islamic Law does not differentiate between humanitarian law and human rights law, rather in Islam, protection of the right to lie has been ensured on equal footings in and outside an armed conflict. The paper focuses the main causes of differences between IHL and HRL. Consequently, sorting out the best possible manner in which such differences can be removed and resultantly by recommending the standard and criteria as to how the right to life can be best protected.