The Threat to the Life of the Nation as an Introductory Premise of the Derogation of Obligations in the Domain of Human Rights

The subject of the study is the issue defined in international documents by the term “threat to the life of the nation” as a preliminary condition for departing from obligations in the field of human rights. This premise was adopted both in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as in similar regulations for individual continents, including the European Convention on Human Rights.

However, on a practical basis, this issue has raised and continues to raise multiple interpretation doubts. In the presented considerations, various aspects of this problem are presented in the light of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights.

On the basis of these, it can be assumed that one cannot identify the category of the nation with the categories of the state and//or the population, since each of these categories has its due autonomy; while on the other hand, they accompany, coexist and remain in mutual relations and interaction. Hence, in international norms, both the treaty provisions and the treaty bodies in their rulings consistently confirm “the life of the nation” as the fundamental protected value, which does not prevent them from associating this value with values important for the state as such and for the population/society.

The classic model of this approach has already been established by the ECtHR in the Lawless case, where the Court described a derogation situation as “an exceptional crisis or emergency situation that affects the entire population and poses a threat to the organized life of the community that comprises the state