S. Vezzani, "Recenti sviluppi in tema di applicazione extraterritoriale delle convenzioni internazionali sui diritti umani"

This paper deals with recent developments concerning the extraterritorial scope of human rights treaties. Firstly, it examines the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights relating to the procedural obligation, under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to investigate alleged war crimes committed by the armed forces of States parties to the Convention outside their territory (Georgia v. Russia and Hanan v. Germany judgments). Secondly, the paper discusses evolving trends and new challenges emerging from the practice of UN human rights treaty bodies, notably the Human Rights Committee’s views in the Lampedusa case and the decision by the Committee on the Rights of the Child concerning French Children in Syrian Camps. In all these cases, there was no spatial effective control and subjection to the State’s coercive power. The State’s extraterritorial jurisdiction was based on the extraterritorial effects of State conduct. The paper considers some still unresolved questions posed by this model of extraterritorial jurisdiction, including the identification of the causal link between the State conduct and its extraterritorial effects, and the interplay between jurisdiction and allocation of international responsibility.