An International Human Rights Law of Cooperation: International Cooperation, State Responsibility and the European Convention on Human Rights

This incisive book examines how states bear responsibility for human rights protection when they cooperate. Focusing on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), it explores the challenges of international cooperation to international human rights law and uncovers how, nonetheless, human rights provisions may turn into an international human rights law of cooperation and regulate inter-state interaction.

Prisca Feihle discusses the meaning of international cooperation to human rights law, engaging in detailed analysis of case-law to illustrate how the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) addresses cooperation between states in a range of areas including migration policies, surveillance measures or criminal investigations. Developing a comprehensive framework for states’ human rights responsibilities in international cooperation, she puts forward insightful recommendations on what human rights law under the ECHR demands of states beyond these specific subject matters. Suggestions concern the ECHR’s interactions with the law of international responsibility, interpretational method and the scope of application and content of human rights provisions in relation to inter-state interaction affecting individuals.

This judicious book is a vital resource for students and scholars of public international law, particularly those with an interest in the law of international responsibility, human rights law and especially the ECHR and ECtHR. It will also benefit those studying international relations, as well as practitioners and policymakers in the field of human rights law.

Prisca Feihle, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany