Allocating Duties and Distributing Responsibilities in a Post-Territorial Human Rights Paradigm

Migration is one of the frontier areas for rethinking the way in which human rights obligations are typically allocated. Not only is migration externalised and privatised, it is also a consequence of structural global inequalities. But complexity cannot be an excuse for lack of human rights accountability. Nor is there an unchecked mission creep: if human rights are indeed universal, there is no other option but to fill post-territorial gaps in human rights protection.

31. Juli 2024

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Relationalizing the EU’s Fundamental Rights Responsibility

Human rights law traditionally governs a three-part relationship which connects the individual, the state, and its territory. The design of the EU’s Integrated Border Management (IBM) governance model eschews the applicability and enforceability of international and European human (fundamental) rights law by significantly reconfiguring the relationship between each of these three prongs. This contribution maps how these three traditional triggers for the applicability of human rights law are increasingly evaded in EU IBM policies, the responses to these evasion techniques and how a relational turn in the determination of human rights responsibility may be inevitable. 

31. Juli 2024

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Humanitarian Visas for International Protection Purposes

When feasible, third-country nationals request within EU Member States’ diplomatic or consular representations a visa on the basis of their need of international protection, in order to be granted legal access to the issuing State’s territory precisely to apply for international protection upon arrival. The focal point is whether States can be required to issue these visas in order to comply with their human rights obligations. This contribution demonstrates that the European Court of Human Rights holding that States do not hold any obligation in the context of humanitarian visa proceedings is unconvincing.

31. Juli 2024

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Never Again to Us and/or to Anyone

There are few questions that have proven themselves more fruitless to pose than “What Are the Lessons of the Holocaust?” For very many Jews, and certainly for the Israeli state, the lesson, to be realized in law and policy, is “Never Again–to Us”. The more liberal or universalist lessons are a call for civil courage, democratic self-defense and early awareness of the possibility of dictatorship and mass murder, “Never Again–to Anyone. The tension between these two perspectives is found everywhere the matter is considered, even in Israel and even symbolically.

31. Juli 2024

Common but Differentiated Responsibility in Climate and Genocide Cases

The search for a more equitable and legally binding responsibility distribution mechanism in global refugee protection starts with the question what responsibility states bear for the protection of refugees and other forced migrants outside of their territory. Here I discuss two potential avenues within international law: the operationalised international law principles of cooperation and solidarity, based on their application in climate cases; and the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) doctrine from international humanitarian law. The distribution mechanism they both apply might be useful to establish and define extraterritorial protection obligations of states towards refugees.

30. Juli 2024

Due Diligence in International Law

This contribution determines to what extent the international law obligations of due diligence, the no harm principle or the principle sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas can be relied upon today to advance extraterritorial obligations of states towards migrants. Crucially for this purpose, the due diligence obligation is not limited to individuals within the jurisdiction of a State. Rather, States must ensure that activities within their jurisdiction do not cause serious harm to individuals in the territory of another State or to common interests of the international community.

30. Juli 2024

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An Inconvenient Truth? Fascism and Ethno-Nationalism

India’s modern history has been profoundly shaped by a concern that nationalism can lead to mass violence and atrocity, if not genocide. This preoccupation was also shaped by the experience of World War II. Indian politicians and thinkers often referred to the experience of Nazism in making the case for India to intervene and prevent an impending genocide in what was then East Pakistan. While the intervention led to the creation of an independent state of Bangladesh, it was also a case in which invocation of the holocaust and “Never Again” was apt.

30. Juli 2024

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›One, No One, One Hundred Thousand‹

States use mechanisms such as visas, maritime interdiction operations, pushback practices to unsafe countries to prevent migrants from reaching their shores, applying for asylum, or invoking fundamental rights guarantees. This raises the question of whether and to what extent States have extraterritorial obligations towards migrants who have not yet reached the territory of destination countries. By focusing on recent practices in the Mediterranean, this post addresses this overarching question.

29. Juli 2024

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Beyond Borders

The question of extraterritoriality has found a very particular application in contexts of migration. This renders the questions of which state has to fulfill human rights obligations while a migrant is on the move and to what extent very pressing ones. This symposium examines what the existing criteria for attribution exactly mean for states’ extraterritorial obligations and responsibility in a migration context and whether arguments from other fields of law could either inspire or be implemented beyond their respective borders.

29. Juli 2024

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Influences of the Holocaust on the Constitutional Law of Israel

The trauma of Auschwitz continues to reverberate in the collective consciousness of Israelis and manifests in Israeli laws across several primary domains. However, the primary impact of the Holocaust trauma on Israeli constitutional law has been the concerted efforts to prevent Israel from descending into a fascist, racist regime akin to Germany in the 1930s. The incorporation of the concept of Intolerant Democracy, which occupies a central role in Israeli constitutional law, was explicitly inspired by German history.

29. Juli 2024

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