compromise of the international court of justice to the protection of the human

Guiné vs. Congo case

Abstract

Although incipiently, international public law has been present in the interaction between peoples since ancient Roman societies. However, this would only be modernised after the Westphalia Peace Treaties, which introduced the principle of sovereign equality in the relationship between nations. Later, after World War I, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles introduced the first competent court for international trials: the Permanent Court of International Justice. Notwithstanding, the hecatombs committed by Nazi Germany created the creation of a world society that was concerned with lasting peace among peoples, thus the United Nations emerges, at the same time, the 1945 United Nations Charter, inserts the International Court of Justice, which would replace the court once created by the Versailles Treaty. However, what appeared to be a considerable advance in the law of the people came up against the will of the States, hampering the procedural capacity of individuals to vindicate their rights and, consequently, the satisfactory international protection of the human person. In any case, the reality of the globalised world does not match the international law of Westphalia, which is restricted to nation states. Under this perspective, through a centripetal movement for the humanisation of people's rights, which, influenced by the Inter-American and European Human Rights Courts, the Hague Court has been taking new directions, this time, aiming at the universal legal conscience as a material source of international law and fundamental for the manifestation of the individual's international legal personality. The taking of this contemporary conception could be seen in the case of Guinea vs.Congo, which used for the first time, the jurisprudence of international courts and human rights treaties among peoples. Therefore, it will be used as a method of approach, the deductive, and as a method of procedure, the historical, the explanatory and the functionalist.