The Edges of Extraterritorial Jurisdiction: The Integration of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights into Peace Support Operations

Abstract

The failure to deliver the goods and services that advance economic, social and cultural rights can have economic, social and political consequences. The failure to provide an effective legal avenue of redress can have repercussions across the full spectrum of human rights both for the individual and the State. Moreover, as the rising number of increasingly complex peace support operations testifies, the impact of the State's failure to deliver basic goods and services that satisfy immediate physical needs and serve as a conduit for accessing the full spectrum of human rights is not always confined to its own borders. Thus, (re)establishment of human rights standards is now increasingly a matter for peace support operations. Peace support personnel and their States are also increasingly scrutinised to ensure that their own behaviour accords with human rights standards. Consideration of the extraterritorial effect of sending States' human rights obligations is one mechanism by which such scrutiny is served. This article seeks to establish that international law's evolving jurisprudence on human rights and peace support, as well as the discourse surrounding this evolution, can and should to extend to matters of economic, social and cultural rights.