From the contemporary legal perspective war atrocities have to be seen as mass violations of human rights. They affect all members of the society, regardless of their gender, age, skin color, nationality or ethnic origin. Women however, were and still are particularly vulnerable to all forms of such violations, in particular - becoming victims of various forms of violence. The aim of the paper is to answer the question of whether the legal and the actual position of women in the armed conflicts has changed in any terms. In order to achieve this goal, the most typical examples of violations of women's rights during present-day hostilities will be indicated and examined. Moreover, the Author will analyze international legislation having as object the protection of women in armed conflicts, in search for any evolution of that legal framework.
Civil actions for war crimes serve the purposes of obtaining a public acknowledgment of the tort and that of reaffirming the legal binding force of the rules protecting fundamental human rights. However, two main obstacles arise before such actions since the defendant is a State: immunity from jurisdiction and the political act doctrine. The interaction between the Italian Supreme Courts (Corte di Cassazione and Corte Costituzionale), the European Court of Human Rights and the International Court of Justice provides clear examples of the achievements and the remaining challenges in this field, where the right of access to a court and the right to an effective remedy should not be excluded in the name of an absolute sovereignty or of an unaccountable raison d’État.
Despite the fact that EU was acknowledged to ensure human rights protection level equivalent to the one ensured under European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), it is doubtful if the EU was able to ensure human rights in time of recent migrant crisis. It is argued in the Article that, absence of comprehensive EU-level migrant policy restricted EU's ability to prevent the crisis and to mitigate its consequences as well as human rights violations. In addition, being oriented to ex post rights defense, EU's system was also practically unsuitable to defend the rights of the asylum seekers after the violations actually occurred. It is proposed that EU should address migration issues immediately by introducing major migration policy reform.