Due Diligence Obligations in International Human Rights Law

With the importance of non-State actors ever increasing, the traditional State-centric approach of international law is being put to the test. In particular, significant accountability lacunae have emerged in the field of human rights protection. To address these challenges, this book makes a case for extraterritorial due diligence obligations of States in international human rights law. It traces back how due diligence obligations evolved on the international plane and develops a general analytical framework making the broad and vague notion of due diligence more approachable. The framework is applied to different fields of international law which provides guidance on how due diligence obligations can be better conceptualized. Drawing inspiration from these developments, the book analyses how extraterritorial human rights due diligence obligations could operate in practice and foster global human rights protection.

Introduction; 1. Why to analyze state responsibility for human rights violations: the flawed debate on direct human rights obligations for non-state actors; 2. Establishing state responsibility for human rights violations: proposal for a conduct-based typology of human rights obligations; 3. The origins of due diligence in international law; 4. The components of the due diligence standard; 5. Lessons to be learned from the application of due diligence obligations in other fields of International Law; 6. Applying the due diligence framework to the field of human rights protection; 7. A case for extraterritorial due diligence obligations in the human rights context; Summary and outlook; Index.

Maria Monnheimer is a research assistant at LMU Munich. Prior to this she served as legal clerk to the Federal Ministry of Justice in Berlin and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Maria studied law at the University of Heidelberg and University of Cambridge and holds a Ph.D. in Public International Law from LMU Munich.