ABSTRACT
There is now a substantial and growing body of authoritative interpretation of international human rights by leading international human rights courts, commissions, committees and commentators, suggesting that states’ hitherto latent extraterritorial obligations are now recognised as material and operative. This expanding body of jurisprudence and commentary illustrates clearly that there is nothing preordained about the nature of a state’s jurisdictional territory, the manner by which it structures relations between legal actors, and the form in which it allocates rights and responsibilities. Certainly, the texts of international human rights law themselves accommodate – indeed prescribe – a state’s scope of responsibility that stretches beyond purely territorial boundaries, and an allocation of duties (whether direct or indirect) that encompass private as well as public actors. What this means in cases of alleged human rights abuses by corporations operating overseas, is that home states (as well as, or even instead of, host states) may find that they are bound under international human rights laws to provide a forum in which to entertain the dispute, and – where the allegations are upheld – to discipline the corporation and provide remedies for the victims.
