46. To this list in the Covenant, the Human Rights Committee has also added,
humane treatment of detainees and human dignity, prohibition of taking of
hostages, abductions or unacknowledged detention; rights of persons
belonging to minorities; deportation or forcible transfer of a population contrary
to Article 7 of the Rome Statute; propaganda for war or advocacy of national,
racial or religious hatred; fair trial and procedural guarantees.154 Other treaties
include additional rights which are also non-derogable155 and simply because
they are not included in the list in the treaty does not mean that other rights can
also be non-derogable. As the Human Rights Committee has said ‘the legal
obligation to narrow down all derogations to those strictly required by the
exigencies of the situation establishes both for states parties and for the
Committee a duty to conduct a careful analysis under each article of the
Covenant based on an objective assessment of the actual situation’.156
47. Guarantees of due process are absolute to the extent that the trial taken as a
whole must be fair: the requirements of competence, independence and
impartiality cannot be derogated from, neither can the presumption of
innocence.157
48. Therefore, while, for example, terrorist threats may threaten the life of the
nation, this does not justify the limits on non-derogable rights. 158
C. Extra-Territorial Application of International Human Rights Standards
20. Human rights treaties secure rights to all within the territory of the State and
subject to its jurisdiction.159 What amounts to jurisdiction for the purposes of
these treaties depends upon the extent of control that a Member State has in
relation to territory, even territory outside its geographic boundaries. 160 The
ICCPR under Article 2 requires States to guarantee the rights to ‘all within its
territory and subject to its jurisdiction’.161 The Human Rights Committee has
made it clear that the ICCPR has extra-territorial reach where persons are
within the power or effective control of the State Party, even if not situated in
the territory of the State Party.162 To hold otherwise, it has noted ‘would be
unconscionable to permit a state to perpetrate violations on foreign territory
which violations it could not perpetrate on its own territory.’163 Similarly, the
International Court of Justice (ICJ), in its advisory opinion on the Legal
Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian
154
Human Rights Committee, General Comment No.29, CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.11 (2001), para 13.
The Arab Charter includes among the list of non-derogable rights the principle of habeas corpus, the
rights to fair trial, human dignity, freedom of movement, political asylum and nationality, among others.
156 Human Rights Committee, General Comment No.29, CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.11 (2001), para 6.
157 Human Rights Committee, General Comment No.29, CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.11, paras 11 and 16.
158 Report of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, E/CN.4/2004/3.
159 Article 3, Arab Charter; Article 1 ECHR;
160 See Louzidou v Turkey, European Court, 23 March 1995; Bankovic v Belgium & Others, European
Court, 1 December 2001.
161 See also Article 3(1) Arab Charter, ‘subject to its jurisdiction’.
162 General Comment No.31, CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add/13 (2004), para 10.
163
Communication No. R 12/52, Lopez Burgos v Uruguay, 6 June 1979, para 10. See before the
European Court, Issa v Turkey, 16 November 2005; Ocalan v Turkey, 12 May 2005.
155
46
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