Compliance of Territorially Fragile States With International Human Rights Law

Abstract

Fragile States are understood as States that are unable or unwilling to exercise effective control over part of their national territory. The fragile State’s compliance with its international law obligations is therefore reduced due to objective factors and this has major impact on international human rights law (IHRL) as well. Nonetheless, scholarship has overlooked that fragile States may and sometimes do comply with their positive obligations in areas beyond their effective control under the evolving, effectiveness-based interpretation of IHRL. The paper argues that each of the dominant compliance theories only partially explains the factors influencing fragile States’ compliance with IHRL: instead of limiting compliance to a monocausal model, both rational choices and internal socialisation processes should be taken into account to enhance the fragile States’ compliance. The two main schools of thoughts, rational and constructivist schools of compliance do provide complementary explanations to the questions why and how fragile States can comply with their positive obligations under IHRL.

Keywords: compliance, international human rights law, fragile States, due diligence, territorial control