In March of this year, the Human Rights Interest Group of the American Society of International Law, sponsored a panel on the Bankovic case before the European Court of Human Rights. The panel comprised Hurst Hannum, one of the lawyers for the applicants in the case, and Christopher Greenwood, one of the lawyers representing the United Kingdom, one of the respondent States. Tom Farer, a former Chairman of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, was the official Commentator on the debate, and I would like to begin my presentation with one of his comments. He stated that: “The issue could be seen in terms of whether and when an official human rights body should press against the textual envelope of its jurisdiction.” In his view, the language of article 1 of the European Convention was not decisive in depriving the Court of exercising jurisdiction in the Bankovic case, whereas Professor Greenwood had argued that the Court “held the [Bankovic] application inadmissible on the substantive ground that the Convention did not apply.” Article 1 of the European Convention, is, like all legal texts, of course, subject to interpretation: “The High Contracting Parties shall secure to everyone within their jurisdictions the rights and freedoms defined in Section 1 of this Convention.” According to Professor Greenwood, the European Court held that for a State party to be found responsible for a violation of the Convention, the alleged victim must be within the jurisdiction of a respondent State. The persons killed and injured in the RTS building had not been within the jurisdiction of any of the respondents at the time of the attack, since the FRY was not party to the European Convention and the respondent States did not exercise effective control (“as a consequence of military occupation or through the consent, invitation or acquiescence of the government of that territory”). Consequently, the Convention was held not to apply and the petition was declared inadmissible.

Cerna, C.M. (2002). The Extraterritorial scope of human rights treaties: The American convention on human rights , Christina M. Cerna

Cerna,   Jurisdicción.The Extraterritorial scope of human rights treaties: The American convention on human rights , Christina M. Cerna .  2002

Cerna,   Jurisdicción.The Extraterritorial scope of human rights treaties: The American convention on human rights .  Estados Unidos :  Christina M. Cerna .  2002