Extraterritorial human rights obligations and responsibility under international law 1

Abstract

Extraterritorial human rights obligations (ETOs) pose important questions as regards how responsibility for internationally wrongful acts ought to be attributed and distributed under international law, especially in cases where the obligations breached are shared by multiple actors. The responsibility of extraterritorial states for human rights violations may take on three forms. First, extraterritorial states may incur responsibility for their own acts or omissions resulting in human rights violations. Second, states may incur responsibility for human rights violations originating from the acts or omissions of international organisations (IOs), to which they are members. Finally, states may incur responsibility for human rights violations when any entity, such as a business enterprise, that they have obligations to regulate engage in acts or omissions resulting in human rights violations. In all these cases, the human rights violations in question involve one or more states and one or more types of non-state actor. These scenarios necessitate the consideration of shared responsibility, the parameters of which remain contentious. This chapter surveys the debates around responsibility, particularly in light of the recent debates in public international law such as the elaboration of Articles on State Responsibility (ASR), Articles on the Responsibility of International Organisations (ARIO) and legal scholarship around shared responsibility, as well as sociological and political conceptualisations of shared responsibility to showcase their relevance to ETOs today.