"Whether as a result of the war on terrorism, foreign military intervention, economic globalisation or otherwise, state conduct increasingly affects the human rights of individuals beyond its own borders ... This book focuses on the extraterritorial application of four key human rights treaties: the two UN Covenants on Human Rights and the American and European Conventions on Human Rights. It points out inconsistencies in the practice of the supervisory bodies of these treaties and discusses the pros and cons of both a restrictive and an expansive approach."--Back cover.

Questions as to when a state owes obligations under a human rights treaty towards an individual located outside its territory are being brought more and more frequently before both international and domestic courts. Victims of aerial bombardment, inhabitants of territories under military occupation, deposed dictators, suspected terrorists detained in Guantanamo by the United States, and the family of a former KGB spy who was assassinated in London through the use of a radioactive toxin, allegedly at the orders or with the collusion of the Russian government - all of these people have claimed protection from human rights law against a state affecting their lives while acting outside its territory. These matters are extremely politically and legally sensitive, leading to much confusion, ambiguity and compromise in the existing case law. This study attempts to clear up some of this confusion, and expose its real roots. It examines the notion of state jurisdiction in human rights treaties, and places it within the framework of international law. It is not limited to an inquiry into the semantic, ordinary meaning of the jurisdiction clauses in human rights treaties, nor even to their construction into workable legal concepts and rules. Rather, the interpretation of these treaties cannot be complete without examining their object and purpose, and the various policy considerations which influence states in their behaviour, and courts in their decision-making. The book thus exposes the tension between universality and effectiveness, which is itself the cause of methodological and conceptual inconsistency in the case law. Finally, the work elaborates on the several possible models of the treaties' extraterritorial application. It offers not only a critical analysis of the existing case law, but explains the various options that are before courts and states in addressing these issues, as well as their policy implications.

Focusing on treaties jeopardized during the 'war on terror', this book investigates whether and to what extent human rights treaties apply to states acting abroad. It proposes a way to accommodate conflicting interests, while preserving the effective protection of basic rights.

Argues that international human rights and water laws provide legal bases for the right to water and its extraterritorial application.

The first book to examine the creation and function of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency.

This book combines legal and philosophical perspectives to address the question of whether states are bound by human rights when they act with effects on people abroad—states’ extraterritorial human rights obligations. Taking an innovative approach, it begins with a profound legal analysis of the issue at national, supranational, and international levels and then engages in depth with counterarguments against extraterritorially applying human rights, on the basis of which it develops its own ethical justificatory theory of extraterritorial human rights obligations. The book closes the circle by showing what the practical implications of this theory for the interpretation (and possible evolvement) of human rights law would be. In a world where critiques of, and resistance to, the general idea of universal human rights are on rise, the book contributes to closing the gap between judicial and normative perspectives on extraterritorial human rights obligations by inquiring into the ethical underpinnings of this topical legal challenge. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students in human rights, international law, and more broadly in political philosophy, philosophy of law, and international relations.

A comprehensive analysis of the legal challenges and practical consequences of applying international human rights law in armed conflict situations.

Preventive detention as a counter-terrorism tool is fraught with conceptual and procedural problems and risks of misuse, excess and abuse. Many have debated the inadequacies of the current legal frameworks for detention, and the need for finding the most appropriate legal model to govern detention of terror suspects that might serve as a global paradigm. This book offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of the detention of terror suspects under domestic criminal law, the law of armed conflict and international human rights law. The book looks comparatively at the law in a number of key jurisdictions including the USA, the UK, Israel, France, India, Australia and Canada and in turn compares this to preventive detention under the law of armed conflict and various human rights treaties. The book demonstrates that the procedures governing the use of preventive detention are deficient in each framework and that these deficiencies often have an adverse and serious impact on the human rights of detainees, thereby delegitimizing the use of preventive detention. Based on her investigation Diane Webber puts forward a new approach to preventive detention, setting out ten key minimum criteria drawn from international human rights principles and best practices from domestic laws. The minimum criteria are designed to cure the current flaws and deficiencies and provide a base line of guidance for the many countries that choose to use preventive detention, in a way that both respects human rights and maintains security.

This book contains a systematic assessment of the content and scope of obligations to prevent gross human rights violations. There has been a great deal of attention for concepts aiming to prevent gross human rights violations, such as conflict prevention and the responsibility to protect. Yet despite this shift in attention towards prevention, it has remained unclear what legal obligations states have to prevent gross human rights violations under international human rights law. The focus in this book is on three specific types of injury prohibited under international human rights law: torture, arbitrary death and genocide. Further distinctions are made between four temporal phases (long-term prevention, short-term prevention, preventing continuation, preventing recurrence) and territorial and extraterritorial obligations. The structure of the book allows academics and practitioners to learn about obligations to prevent gross human rights violations in a general sense, as well as find targeted information on the content and scope of obligations in specific settings. Nienke van der Have recently completed her Ph.D. at the Amsterdam Center for International Law, which forms part of the University of Amsterdam’s Faculty of Law, and currently works as Senior legal specialist at the department of Constitutional Affairs and Legislation of the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations of The Netherlands.

This book explores to what extent a state owes human rights obligations to individuals outside of its territory, when the conduct of that state impacts upon the lives of those individuals. It draws upon legal and political philosophy to develop a theory of extraterritoriality based on the nature of human rights, merging accounts of economic, social, and cultural rights with those of civil and political rights Lea Raible outlines four main arguments aimed at changing the way we think about the extraterritoriality of human rights. First, she argues that questions regarding extraterritoriality are really about justifying the allocation of human rights obligations to specific states. Second, the book shows that human rights as found in international human rights treaties are underpinned by the values of integrity and equality. Third, she shows that these same values justify the allocation of human rights obligations towards specific individuals to public institutions - including states - that hold political power over those individuals. And finally, the book demonstrates that title to territory is best captured by the value of stability, as opposed to integrity and equality. On this basis, Raible concludes that all standards in international human rights treaties that count as human rights require that a threshold of jurisdiction, understood as political power over individuals, is met. The book applies this theory of extraterritoriality to explain the obligations of states in a wide range of cases.