Some observations on the legal responsibility of States and International Organizations in the Extraterritorial Processing of Asylum Claims

The idea of establishing centres for the “external processing” of asylum claims – already supported by someEU Member States, and actually realized in the Caribbean by the United States and in the Pacific area by Australia – has recently come to the fore again in European debates. The recent proposals –which tend to create offshore centres in Turkey and probably in African countries too – envisage various levels of involvement of EU Member States and of the EU itself. The present contribution aims to analyse, in particular, which of the various actors implicated would be responsible, and to what extent, in cases of violation of asylum seekers’ human rights. The scenario that could be envisaged is extremely complex. Disentangling the web of action/attribution/responsibility is very difficult and the risk of “blame shifting” or “passing the buck” among the various actors is high. The possibility of the extraterritorial application of the European Convention on Human Rights will also be explored, in order to assess to what extent individuals would have access to a remedy before the European Court of Human Rights.