Join us for a research group interview with Federico Zumpani (University of Palermo) with discussant Dr Federica Paddeu (Research Fellow in International Law, University of Cambridge), on Zumpani’s research. The aim of the paper is to identify the contradictions inherent in the international conventions for the protection of human rights in conceiving the state of emergency as a situation (tumultum) in which the “reason of state” overcomes individual rights. The cause of the emergency does not affect the applicable rules, but does however play a key role in the case of armed conflict, as in this case the application of the rules on the protection of human rights in peacetime intersects with the application of the corresponding rules of humanitarian law. The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed examination of the legal basis of suspended rights, starting from human rights inside an armed conflict.