INTRODUCTION

While the previous chapter examined the obligations of partner States that host people on the move in the context of cooperative migration control, this chapter focuses on the obligations of sponsor States. Starting from the presumption that extraterritorial States have complementary obligations to realise human rights, it addresses the following question: to what extent do sponsor States have obligations to complement partner States’ efforts to realise at least people on the move's core socio-economic rights? Chapter III found that Sponsor States have two types of extraterritorial obligations as regards socio-economic rights: direct obligations towards people abroad over whom they exercise jurisdiction and global obligations of international assistance and cooperation. This chapter analyses both types of obligations in turn.

Section 2 first examines sponsor States’ direct extraterritorial obligations. It discusses three models of extraterritorial jurisdiction developed in the context of civil and political rights: the spatial model, the personal model, and the effects model. It then argues that the functional model, which finds support in legal standards on socioeconomic rights as well as civil and political rights, offers the best conceptualisation of States’ extraterritorial human rights obligations in the context of cooperative migration control. The functional model proposes that a State exercises jurisdiction when it can take reasonable measures to avoid reasonably foreseeable human rights violations. Section 2 also discusses whether and to what extent sponsor States have direct obligations to realise the socio-economic rights of people on the move affected by cooperative migration control.

As extraterritorial jurisdiction doctrines have largely developed under instruments protecting civil and political rights like the ICCPR and the ECHR, legal standards developed under these instruments form a logical starting point for the analysis of sponsor States’ direct extraterritorial obligations. Because the ECtHR has the most voluminous and detailed case law on extraterritorial jurisdiction, the latter plays an important role in clarifying States’ direct extraterritorial obligations. Yet as a matter of binding law, the ECtHR's case law is only relevant for European sponsor States and Turkey. Moreover, the ECtHR's approach to extraterritorial jurisdiction is more restrictive than that of the HRC or IACtHR.