Are we all in this together? Human Rights in light of International Cooperation and Extraterritorial Obligations - Joint Event with OxHRH

Professor Sigrun Skogly

In this paper, Professor Skogly addresses the question as to how far states’ extraterritorial human rights obligations go in terms of international cooperation and assistance.  She questions whether there is an obligation to provide international assistance, and if so what the legal and moral foundations for such obligations may be.  She further addresses the content of extraterritorial human rights obligations in international assistance and cooperation in light of possible obligations to provide assistance or not.  She will argue that the current developments in international human rights law are increasingly accepting of shared and extraterritorial obligations, and that this concept is of essence if implementation of human rights standards shall have any real prospects.  Professor Skogly will base much of her paper on recent developments in human rights law, including the Maastricht Principles on States Extraterritorial Obligations in the area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, recent developments within the UN human rights committees, and the contributions by UN Special Rapporteurs.

Biographical data

Sigrun Skogly is Professor of Human Rights Law at Lancaster University, where she also serves as Associate Dean for Postgraduate Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.  She has written extensively on human rights obligations, and has several books and articles on extraterritorial human rights obligations, including Beyond National Borders: Human Rights Obligations in International Cooperation (Intersentia, 2006), and Universal Human Rights and Extraterritorial Obligations (edited with Mark Gibney – Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).