CCPR/C/130/D/3042/2017 Annex VI Individual opinion of Committee member Vasilka Sancin (concurring) 1. I agree with the Views of the Committee that the individuals on the vessel in distress were directly affected by the decisions of Italy in a manner that was reasonably foreseeable in the light of the relevant legal obligations of Italy, and that they were thus subject to the State party’s jurisdiction, concurrently to the jurisdiction of Malta, for the purposes of the Covenant, and that the Committee was therefore not precluded by article 1 of the Optional Protocol from considering the present communication. I also fully agree with the Committee’s finding of a violation of article 6, read alone and in conjunction with article 2 (3), of the Covenant. 2. However, I wish to emphasize that in my view, since the tragic events took place on the high seas, where, according to the law of the sea, neither Italy nor Malta may exercise any territorial jurisdiction, other than over the vessels flying their flags, and in circumstances exhaustively envisaged in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea – e.g., in a case of piracy – the issue of compatibility of the communication under article 1 of the Optional Protocol ratione loci, establishing whether the individuals were subject to State party’s jurisdiction, applying the maxim of “power or effective control”, is intrinsically linked to the right engaged, that is, the right to life. The Committee emphasized (para. 7.5), referring to its general comment No. 36 (2018), that States parties must respect and protect the lives of individuals who find themselves in a situation of distress at sea, in accordance with their international obligations on rescue at sea (emphasis added). 3. It is for this reason that I find, after considering the facts and particular circumstances of the case (para. 7.7), that the communication is admissible, although events occurred in the area of the high seas. The authors sufficiently demonstrated (a) that Italy had a power to act upon its international duties, that is, to render assistance to a vessel in distress in accordance with article 98 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and to assist Maltese authorities in its search and rescue area; (b) that Italy led the victims to believe, in particular within the first hour(s) after contact had been made, that it would comply with those duties; and (c) that such necessary activities could have directly, and in a reasonably foreseeable manner, affected the events. By this assumption of its obligation to exercise the existing power in the concrete case, in my view, Italy subjected the victims to its jurisdiction, but owing to its omission to act accordingly, failed to protect their lives and, after the fact, to properly investigate the incident, which resulted in a violation of the authors’ rights. 18