ABSTRACT
Studying the extraterritorial applicability of several regimes of human rights law revealed a substantial degree of complexity, manifested at various legal levels. This first part of the book comes to two conclusions: (i) The strong territorial underpinnings of the legal protection of human rights—traditionally conceptualized as rights of individuals against the state on the territory of which they reside—continue to be felt. Even though there is a clear tendency to expand human rights obligations beyond states’ borders, other jurisprudential approaches at various levels indicate that the territorial paradigm has not yet been overcome. Related to this, the chapter (ii) concludes that the extraterritorial applicability of human rights law constitutes a pressing and unresolved legal problem: The task of providing coherent approaches to the issue continues to challenge judicial bodies, epitomized by the controversies around the concept of jurisdiction, which conditions the applicability of a wide range of international human rights treaties. The (i) persistence of this territorial paradigm and the related skepticism toward extraterritorial obligations might contribute to (ii) the lack of coherence in addressing the issue. In other words, in the course of developing consistent principles with regard to extraterritorial applicability, this territorial paradigm and its normative underpinnings must be addressed.
