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This article examines how states perceive their extraterritorial human rights obligations. Based on an analysis of recommendations made by states during the Universal Periodic Review, it suggests that the view that extraterritorial obligations form an integral part of a state's human rights obligations is fairly widespread. The article also shows that states perceive extraterritorial obligations as primarily negative. These obligations arise whether a state exercises control over territory or merely exercises factual control. The article concludes that the human rights doctrine is currently being reinterpreted and is becoming more closely aligned with its cosmopolitan roots.

Existing research on the legitimacy of the UN Security Council is conceptual or theoretical, for the most part, as scholars tend to make legitimacy assessments with reference to objective standards. Whether UN member states perceive the Security Council as legitimate or illegitimate has yet to be investigated systematically; nor do we know whether states care primarily about the Council's compliance with its legal mandate, its procedures, or its effectiveness. To address this gap, our article analyzes evaluative statements made by states in UN General Assembly debates on the Security Council, for the period 1991-2009. In making such statements, states confer legitimacy on the Council or withhold legitimacy from it. We conclude the following: First, the Security Council suffers from a legitimacy deficit because negative evaluations of the Council by UN member states far outweigh positive ones. Nevertheless, the Council does not find itself in an intractable legitimacy crisis because it still enjoys a rudimentary degree of legitimacy. Second, the Council's legitimacy deficit results primarily from states' concerns regarding the body's procedural shortcomings. Misgivings as regards shortcomings in performance rank second. Whether or not the Council complies with its legal mandate has failed to attract much attention at all.

This article examines how states and international organizations can be held to account for extraterritorial human rights violations. I develop and investigate the potential of what I call an “indirect accountability” mechanism. In indirect accountability relationships, accountability fora do not directly hold states and international organizations that commit extraterritorial human rights violations to account as these are frequently immune to direct accountability claims. Instead, they hold them to account indirectly by addressing accountability claims to an implicated third party, expecting that the third party will upload the accountability claims to the state or international organization. After conceptualizing the mechanism and its scope conditions, I conduct two brief qualitative case studies using the method of deductive process tracing to explore the potential of the mechanism. The first case study traces efforts to indirectly hold the United States to account for violating foreigners’ privacy rights in the context of mass surveillance. The second case study traces attempts to indirectly hold the United Nations Security Council to account for violating the due process rights of blacklisted terror suspects. Both case studies provide support for the mechanism. Este artículo analiza cómo los estados y las organizaciones internacionales pueden ser responsables de las violaciones extraterritoriales de derechos humanos. Desarrollo e investigo el potencial de lo que llamo un mecanismo de «responsabilidad indirecta.” En las relaciones de responsabilidad indirecta, los foros de esta índole no responsabilizan de manera directa a los estados y las organizaciones internacionales que cometen violaciones extraterritoriales de derechos humanos, ya que con frecuencia son inmunes a las reclamaciones de responsabilidad directa. En lugar de eso, los responsabilizan de manera indirecta al dirigir las reclamaciones de responsabilidad a un tercero implicado, y esperan que este tercero traslade las reclamaciones de responsabilidad al estado u organización internacional. Después de conceptualizar el mecanismo y sus condiciones de alcance, realizo dos breves estudinternational organizations de casos cualitativos utilizando el método de seguimiento deductivo de procesos para explorar el potencial del mecanismo. El primer estudio de caso realiza un seguimiento de los esfuerzos por responsabilizar de manera indirecta a Estados Unidos por violar los derechos de privacidad de los extranjeros en el contexto de la vigilancia masiva. El segundo estudio de caso realiza un seguimiento de los intentos de responsabilizar de manera indirecta al Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas por violar los derechos al debido proceso legal de los sospechosos de terrorismo que figuran en la lista negra. Ambos estudinternational organizations de caso respaldan el mecanismo. Cet article étudie dans quelle mesure les états et les organisations internationales peuvent être tenus responsables des violations extraterritoriales de droits humains. Je développe et j’examine le potentiel de ce que j’appelle un mécanisme de «responsabilité indirecte.” Dans le cadre de relations de responsabilité indirecte, les forums de responsabilité ne considèrent pas les états et les organisations internationales qui commettent des violations extraterritoriales de droits humains directement responsables, car ces derniers bénéficient souvent de l’immunité contre les plaintes engageant leur responsabilité. À la place, ils les tiennent indirectement responsables et adressent les plaintes engageant leur responsabilité à une tierce partie impliquée, laquelle doit les transmettre à l’état ou l’organisation internationale. Après avoir conceptualisé le mécanisme et ses conditions d’application, je mène deux brèves études de cas qualitatives en utilisant la méthode du process tracing déductif pour explorer le potentiel du mécanisme. La première étude de cas trace les efforts réalisés pour tenir les États-Unis indirectement responsables de la violation des droits à la vie privée des étrangers dans un contexte de surveillance de masse. La deuxième étude de cas trace les tentatives de tenir le Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU indirectement responsable des violations des droits à une procédure légale des personnes suspectées de terrorisme et black-listées. Les deux études de cas soutiennent ce mécanisme.

This book explores whether the co-existence of (partially) overlapping and sometimes competing layers of authority, which characterizes today's global order, undermines or rather strengthens efforts to promote the rule of law on a global scale.

Human rights violations by international organisations (IOs) are a possible side effect of their growing authority. Recent examples are the cases of sexual exploitation by UN peacekeepers and violations caused by IMF austerity measures. In response, IOs increasingly develop safeguards to protect human rights from being violated through their policies to regain legitimacy. We argue that this development can be accounted for by a mechanism we call ‘authority-legitimation mechanism’. We test this theoretical expectation against ten case studies on UN and EU sanctions policies, UN and NATO peacekeeping and World Bank and IMF lending. Next, we demonstrate inductively that the authority-legitimation mechanism can evolve through different pathways, depending on which actors get engaged. We label these pathways legislative institution-building if parliaments in member states put pressure on their governments to campaign for human rights safeguards in IOs, judicial institution-building if courts demand human rights safeguards, like-minded institution-building if civil society organisations, middle powers and IO bodies with little formal power push for human rights safeguards, or anticipatory institution-building if IOs adopt such safeguards from other IOs without having violated human rights themselves. Finally, we argue that which of these pathways are activated and how effective they are depends on specific conditions.

The UN and EU sanctions regimes against suspected terrorists at first clearly violated commonly accepted due process standards. Both organization gradually reformed the procedures that regulated which individuals and entities were subject to sanctions, yet the UN procedures in particular still evince important shortcomings. While international law scholars have debated how the sanctions regimes must be designed to be consistent with international law, political science scholars have, as yet, largely held back from looking into why the regimes evolved in the way they did. This article suggests that court decisions and proceedings and, in the case of the UN, falling commitment from member states, have prompted the UN Security Council and the Council of the EU to implement limited reforms. However, courts did not challenge the sanctions regimes per se and there was no substantial pressure from civil society actors. Moreover, owing to the competences and working methods of the UN Security Council and the Council of the EU, powerful member states could fairly easily deflect reform proposals from disaffected states and other UN and EU bodies.

Rule of law promotion and security sector reform (SSR) are expected to abide by the same guiding principles. Actors involved in both endeavors are demanded to base their activities on a solid knowledge base. They are urged to take a holistic approach and to ensure that particular components of such an approach are properly coordinated. They are pushed to strive towards local ownership. And, the credibility of external actors is deemed to be of paramount importance. However, there is wide consensus that both rule of law promotion and SSR by and large fail to adhere to these guiding principles. SSR practitioners would thus be ill-advised to rely on applying best practices from rule of law promotion, the older and more established field, to their own endeavor. Rather, both fields ought to step up their efforts to develop practically relevant lessons learned that could then, in turn, be reciprocally useful.

At the outset, EU autonomous sanctions against terror suspects and the steps the EU has taken to facilitate the implementation of UN sanctions against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by EU member states have clearly infringed upon the basic due process rights of targeted parties. Over time, although shortcomings do persist, the EU has markedly improved its procedures for adding and removing individuals, groups and entities from its autonomous sanctions list and it has amended the provisions guiding the implementation of UN sanctions. In this article, I argue that judicial policymaking in the EU courts—the European Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance—has been the driving force behind this evolution. By issuing judgments that challenged the compliance of the EU’s sanctions-related procedures with EU law, the courts compelled the EU to introduce reforms that took at least some stipulations of the court judgements into account. At the same time, the courts, acknowledging their legal and political restrictions, refrained from demanding reforms that would have provided for more effective due process protection but that would have been overly costly to EU member states. These limitations notwithstanding, judicial policymaking can thus be seen as a valuable tool for safeguarding human rights in EU counter-terrorism.

Black root rot is a disease of the strawberry with increasing importance for Germany. Until the early years of the twenty-first century, very different pathogens, including fungi and nematodes, were thought to cause this disease. However, based on substantial research between 2007 and 2014 at the fruit-growing center Jork (Esteburg, Germany) fungi with Cylindrocarpon-like anamorphs, i.e., Dactylonectria torresensis and Ilyonectria spp. were identified as causal agents. Both fungi are soil-borne pathogens and able to infect young strawberry plants in nurseries. Therefore, it is crucial to test plants prior to further propagation for the presence of these organisms. Although speed of diagnosis is a well-known and important factor, until today only time-consuming microbiological tests are available. To improve the situation, we aimed at developing a rapid, PCR-based, assay for the detection of fungi associated with black root rot. Most challenging was the design of specific primers that recognize the pathogen(s) in question while being unspecific for other fungi and Oomycetes routinely found on strawberries. Here, we report on a pair of primers that fulfill these rigorous criteria and present data on their specificity and sensitivity. A concentration of as low as 1.25 pg µl−1 template DNA from target pathogens could be detected in infected tissue. Significantly, the same primers were successfully used in standard and quantitative PCR assays. Based on our results, diagnostic laboratories are now enabled to rapidly survey lots of strawberry plants and provide growers with precise information on the presence of fungi associated with black root rot even in asymptomatic plants.