INTRODUCTION

Like the previous one, this chapter focuses on the second sub-question of this study: how does international law assign responsibility for violations of the socio-economic rights of people on the move where multiple States are involved in migration control? Chapter VI discussed the various ways in which a partner or sponsor State can incur responsibility for violations of the socio-economic rights of people on the move affected by cooperative migration control. Except for the derived responsibility of sponsor States, it did not address the question of how the responsibility of one State relates to that of another State. Yet cooperative migration control, by its very nature, involves multiple States and hence raises the question to what extent responsibility is shared between them, if at all. In this chapter, the analysis shift s from the perspective of a single State to a bird's eye view of the responsibility of multiple States involved in cooperative migration control.

The analysis builds on two premises. First, like the previous chapter, it assumes that a violation of the socio-economic rights of people on the move takes place: if there is no violation there is no need to establish responsibility for it. Second, it presumes that more than one State contributes to such a violation. In other words, there is a causal link between the conduct of each State and the non-realisation of the socio-economic rights of people on the move. Indeed, while partner States are primarily responsible for realising the socio-economic rights of people on the move, the involvement of sponsor States in cooperative migration control has an eff ect on their plight. Although sponsor States’ contribution is more important in some cases than in others, at a general level it is arguable that their role in designing and implementing cooperative migration control policies contributes to violations of the socio-economic rights of people on the move affected by such measures. At the very least, sponsor States contribute to violations of the socio-economic rights of people on the move by containing them in partner States in the Global South that often lack sufficient resources to realise their socio-economic rights. Sponsor States can also have a more direct impact on their rights, for instance when they are involved in the operation of off shore processing centres.