Human Rights Law Beyond Borders

This course considers what obligations states owe to people beyond their borders, notably in the context of ending global poverty, and addressing the climate emergency. The extraterritorial application of human rights law is one of the most contested and fast-moving areas of human rights law today. It is concerned with important and high-profile activities performed by states outside their borders, from war to occupation and anti-piracy and migration-related activities, as well as the more general question of whether economically privileged states have economic duties to people beyond their own citizens, and understanding obligations to address the climate emergency—a quintessentially cross-border phenomenon—and other extraterritorial environmental harms in human rights law terms. This relatively under-explored area of law is becoming a key site for global legal activism in the climate context.