The initial stages of the development of international human rights law, in line with the notion of territorial sovereignty, focused on the mission of taming the powers of a state acting territorially. Thus, the human rights framework has so far been predominantly conceived of as entailing universal human rights and domestic or territorial state duties. As the protection and realisation of human rights has had to grapple with the idea of limiting the harms that the state can do to individuals and peoples in its own territory, emphasis has been placed on devising ways of enhancing domestic application of international human rights. The primary – indeed exclusive – focus of international human rights law and related scholarship has been to develop a framework within which state actors are held to account for domestic infractions of basic human rights. This invariably holds true in relation to the African human rights system.

Yet, the domestic-oriented approach to a state's human rights obligations has increasingly proved to be inadequate for the effective protection and realisation of individuals’ and groups’ rights and freedoms. Violations of human rights at the domestic level have come to be increasingly committed by extraterritorial actors, which could be state or non-state entities. For instance, the diversion or pollution of an international watercourse could cause scarcity of water or seriously compromise the quality of water available to populations of other co-riparian states; and the development aid activities of a state could result in rights violations in the process of implementation in another state.

Moreover, economic globalisation implies that'states, and in particular transnational corporations, may have an impact on the livelihood of persons (and thus on the realisation of their socio-economic rights) outside their territory or country of registration or incorporation’. Increased globalisation has thus given rise to the question whether the human rights obligations of states extend to persons outside of the sovereign territory of these states – that is, whether human rights obligations of states apply extraterritorially.