Chapter 2 | Page 59
It is identified that this obligation is particularly ‘incumbent upon those States
which are in a position to assist others’.60
This element of the Covenant is often referred to by the Committee as
extraterritorial or international ‘responsibility’ or ‘commitment’, which suggests
that the character of this obligation is still under development.61 Skogly and
Gibney use the term ‘extraterritorial’ effect and application in international law
to refer to ‘acts that are taken by one actor (State) that have some kind of
effect within another country’s territory with or without this second country’s
implicit or explicit agreement.’62 To this effect, they argue that:
If human rights protection was something that individual states could (and
would) do individually, there would be no need for any international
conventions. Stripped to their barest essentials, what each one of these
treaties represents is nothing less than this: that everyone has an ethical as
well as a legal obligation to protect the human rights of all other people. In that
way, extraterritorial obligations are not something that is peripheral to human
rights. Rather, extraterritorial obligations are an essential component of
human rights.63
The former Special Rapporteur on the rights to food, Jean Ziegler identifies
extraterritorial obligation as one of the ‘emerging issues’ in relation to his
mandated area.64 According to Ziegler, the extraterritorial obligations flowing
from ICESCR challenges the ‘traditional territorial boundaries of human rights’,
thus to comply with their obligations, particularly with regard to the right to food,
States must respect, protect and support the fulfilment of the right to food of
people living outside their state boundaries.65
60
Ibid., [14].
61
Michał Gondek, The Reach of Human Rights in a Globalising World: Extraterritorial
Application of Human Rights Treaties (Intersentia, Antwerp, 2009), 364.
62
Sigrun Skogly and Mark Gibney, 'Economic Rights and Extraterritorial Obligations' in
Shareen Hertel and Lanse Minkler (eds), Economic Rights: Conceptual, Measurement,
and Policy Issues (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007), 267.
63
Ibid., 274.
64
Commission on Human Rights, The right to food: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the
right to food, Jean Ziegler, 61st sess, UN Doc E/CN.4/2005/47 (24 January 2005).
65
Ibid.
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