Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations of States under International Human Rights Treaties: The Meaning of “Jurisdiction” and Transnational Human Rights Problems

Yoon Jin Shin

doi:10.22976/JHRS.2021.4.1.101

With the growth of transnational mobility and global interdependence, human rights violations are increasingly acquiring transnational features. A territorial approach to the scope of states’ international human rights obligations is inadequate for effectively responding to the diverse and complex aspects of transnational human rights problems. It is first necessary to recognize important normative differences between the traditional concept of jurisdiction under public international law that delimits the scope of a sovereign state’s legal competence and the meaning of jurisdiction under international human rights law that is focused on the relationship between the state and the individual rights-holder. The European Court of Human Rights, however, interprets the term ‘jurisdiction’, a standard for defining the scope of protected individuals under the European Convention on Human Rights, as in principle identical to territorial jurisdiction as understood in general public international law. In relevant decisions, the Court has proceeded to review whether there are justificatory grounds in individual cases for the exceptional recognition of extraterritorial human rights obligations of states parties. While the Human Rights Committee and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have in recent years sought to deliver new interpretive approaches that more proactively address today’s transnational human rights issues, those attempts exhibit theoretical loopholes, conflating elements of the existence of obligations and those of their violations. On the other hand, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has confirmed the possibility of constituting human rights obligations in a way that does not confine the scope of protected individuals on the basis of specific jurisdictional links and instead emphasizes international cooperation for the universal realization of human rights. A critical examination of recent practices and scholarly proposals illuminates the urgent need to develop a systemic and detailed interpretive model that adequately reflects the diverse dimensions, types and features of human rights obligations. For negative human rights obligations (the duty to respect), jurisdictional restrictions on the scope of protected individuals should be eliminated. With regard to positive human rights obligations, including the duty to protect and the duty to fulfil, more comprehensive and contextualized approaches are needed that take into account the prescriptive jurisdiction of the relevant state and a duty of international cooperation. More precise interpretive approaches to states’ extraterritorial human rights obligations will reduce the gap in human rights protection and the risk of outsourcing human rights violations, and ensure that international human rights law will accomplish its intrinsic and contemporary roles in widely transnationalizing human rights realities.

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