Protect, Respect and Remedy: A Framework for Accountability for Human Rights Violations Committed by Foreign Fighters

As the phenomenon of foreign fighters is taking new dimensions by the rise of autonomous terrorist groups, mainly the group calling itself 'Islamic state' (also known as Daesh or ISIL), most of these individuals are perceived as a serious security threat to the peace and justice in the world. Such security perception made current efforts to deal effectively with this complex problem confined within the existing counter-terrorism fora including the United Nations (UN). The U.N. framework of Mercenaries does not seem the right venue for an effective accountability framework. Beyond the conceptual debate - whether Foreign Fighters is a new form of mercenarism - the regulatory framework offer various venues for the protection of human rights. Instead of constructing an accountability mechanism from scratch, this paper calls for the application of the dual obligation to protect and respect, which focuses on victims rights, regardless the nature, the type of the author of the crime.