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497

COMPENSATION IN INTERNATIONAL LAW

other hand, the UN, EU or NATO are somewhat reluctant in reality to establish

stricter responsibility for damages due to peace operations.

Indemnification in the human rights domain

The part of the book dealing with human rights provided by Stanislava

Hýbnerová emphasizes that compensation for wrongful acts of the state against human

rights is of rather a regional nature. In this case the provision about compensation in

the text of conventions does not explicitly refer to indemnification. Therefore from the

practice of regional human rights courts it is evident that the right to idemnification

is given regularly on the basis of the discretion of the international quasi-judicial

or judicial organs rather than as an exercise of a specific substantial right of private

individual in the international agreement. In the case of general international public

law there exists no mechanism which can directly provide compensation for a breach

of an individual’s human rights. This is the result of the lacunae of positive law in

the general international law dealing with indemnification. A remark is also given to

the draft of the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and

Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and

Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law.

The topic researched by Eliška Flídrová in her chapter deals with the thesis

of whether it is possible to find explicit reference concerning indemnification in

selected international agreements on human rights and if these provisions explicitly

provide a private individual wronged with the right to compensation. Research is

provided for legal instruments such as the International Covenant for Civil and

Political Rights, the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons

from Enforced Disappearance, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of

Discrimination against Women or the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms

of Racial Discrimination or the Convention Against Torture.

Concluding remarks explain why international instruments pursue harmonization

of national legal orders by referring the state to ensure remedy to the individual.

Furthermore, answer is given in relation to the absence of a general international

human rights judicial organ and its substitution by selected quasi-judicial commissions

which may hear individual complaints. As is emphasized in the contribution, the

question is whether this sort of regime exercised by national law is effective enough

to provide indemnification for internationally wrongful state conduct.

The chapter provided by Alla Tymofeyeva and Tereza Blšťáková gives an account

of conditions, types and elements of just satisfaction derived from case law of the

European Court of Human Rights. Of additional value is an analysis of the controversial

difference in the judicature between enormous just satisfaction provided for pecuniary

loss and non pecuniary loss, such as in relation to legal persons in comparison to the

substantially lower satisfaction provided for natural persons as in the case of wrongful

state conduct interfering with the right to life. The authors further present methods

used for acquiring data from the judicature of the European Court of Human