Lecture: Besson on "Due diligence and the extraterritorial application of human rights"

On January 17, 2020, Samantha Besson (Collège de France) will give a lecture on "Due diligence and the extraterritorial application of human rights" at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut. Here's the idea:

Various (universal and regional) parts of the practice of the international human rights law are currently showing signs of a loosening of the notion of “jurisdiction” as a ground for the application of human rights. The justification for this development seems primarily to lie in easing the conditions under which human rights duties can arise for States in extraterritorial circumstances where they exercize no effective (personal or spatial) control over the right-holders. This is particularly relevant when extraterritorial human rights violations are caused by multinational corporations incorporated under the law of the given State (or somehow controlled by it) or when they occur through environmental harm whose causes lie somehow under the control of that State. This conference will start by unpacking the various strands of this developing practice to identify and assess what the proposed criteria of jurisdiction could be in those cases (besides causation), before examining how the proposed duties and their grounds actually relate to the standard of due diligence in general and specific international law. A more general reflection on the role of due diligence in international law and the state of international human rights law will ensue.