Al-Skeini v. United Kingdom

In: American journal of international law: AJIL, Band 106, Heft 1, S. 131-137

Abstract

In Al-Skeini v. United Kingdom, decided on July 7, 2011, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (the Court) found that the human rights obligations of the United Kingdom applied to its actions in Iraq and that the United Kingdom had violated Article 2 (right to life) of the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Convention or ECHR) by failing to investigate the circumstances of the deaths of the relatives of five of the six applicants. The case deals with the extraterritorial application in Iraq of the Convention, which is part of UK domestic law by virtue of the Human Rights Act, 1998, and involves the concepts of jurisdiction, effective control, and the scope of the right to life.