Beyond Bankovic: Extraterritorial Application of the European Convention on Human Rights

The obligations set forth in the international and regional instruments on human rights are considered as having a strictly territorial scope. States parties have the duty to guarantee the rights recognized in the treaties to all individuals within their territories. The territorial reach of these obligations is expanding by way of interpretation. In its decision on Bankovic, the European Court reduced the impact of this international trend toward a progressive enlargement of the protection granted by human rights treaties, affirming those attacks conducted by NATO against Yugoslavia in 1999 fell out of the extraterritorial reach of the European Convention. After Bankovic, the Court provided a more articulated interpretation of the issue of extraterritorial acts, previously limited to the European legal space. In examining the case law, this paper deals with the issue of whether and to what extent a State party of the European Convention is accountable for human rights violations perpetrated by its armed forces during military operations conducted abroad. © Federico Sperotto. All rights reserved. This paper may be freely circulated in electronic or hard copy provided it is not modified in any way, the rights of the author not infringed, and the paper is not quoted or cited without express permission of the author. The editors cannot guarantee a stable URL for any paper posted here, nor will they be responsible for notifying others if the URL is changed or the paper is taken off the site. Electronic copies of this paper may not be posted on any other website without express permission of the author