ABSTRACT
The territorial scope of application of human rights treaties is undoubtedly one of the most current and complex topics of contemporary public international law. The scope of many human rights treaties is at least partly determined by how we interpret their (often significantly different) jurisdiction clauses, which set out threshold criteria for the emergence of state obligations. For example, Article 2(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides that ‘[e]ach State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to respect and to ensure to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights recognised in the present Covenant’, Article 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights stipulates that the ‘High Contracting Parties shall secure to everyone within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms defined in Section I of this Convention’, while under Article 2(1) of the UN Convention against Torture (CAT) ‘[e]ach State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction’.
