CCPR/C/130/D/3042/2017
Annex VII
Individual opinion of Committee member Hélène Tigroudja
(concurring)
1.
I fully support the solution reached by the majority. The Views are the first
contribution of the Committee that are aimed at addressing some maritime legal black holes.1
They may provide some substance to a new “right to be rescued at sea”. 2 However, as
developed in my concurring opinion of the communication pertaining to Malta,3 the legal
reasoning followed by the majority is not perfectly rigorous. I will not repeat what I have
written on the unreasoned decision to split the two cases and on the use of a body of law that
is not updated. My main remark on the present Views is focused on the question of the
extraterritorial jurisdiction exercised by Italy (para. 7.8). I am not fully convinced by the
manner in which the majority solved the question. There is a mix up between substantive
obligations and the existence of a jurisdictional link with Italy. More importantly, the grounds
for establishing that jurisdictional link are unclear, and I regret that the majority did not
respond clearly to the arguments presented by the authors in their complaint, based on the
Munaf v. Romania jurisprudence, which were more convincing than what has been retained
in paragraph 7.8.
1
2
3
Itamar Mann, “Maritime legal black holes: migration and rightlessness in international law”,
European Journal of International Law, vol. 29, No. 2 (May 2018), pp. 347–372. See also the
recommendations adopted by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, in Council of
Europe, “Lives saved. Rights protected. Bridging the protection gap for refugees and migrants in the
Mediterranean”, June 2019.
Seline Trévisanut, “Recognizing the right to be rescued at sea”, Ocean Yearbook Online, vol. 31, No.
1 (1 January 2017): 137–154.
A.S. et al. v. Malta (CCPR/C/128/D/3043/2017).
19
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