The Eu’s Human Rights Responsibility Gap: Deconstructing Human Rights Impunity of International Organisations

Can the EU be held legally responsible for its contributions to human rights harms in its Integrated Border Management policy? Or do systemic legal design flaws in the EU’s human rights responsibility regime give rise to a significant responsibility gap?

This book delves into these pressing questions, offering a transversal analysis of applicable legal frameworks under international and EU law. Divided into three parts, the book first analyses the international and EU human rights responsibility frameworks, revealing both ’normative incongruency’ as well as ’liability incongruency’. Part two applies these frameworks to specific illustrations within the four tiers of the EU’s Integrated Border Management, exposing the critical points where responsibility falters. Building on these findings and drawing from shared responsibility and relationality theories, part three briefly introduces ’Relational Human Rights Responsibility’ as an alternative method to ascertaining human rights responsibility of the EU specifically, and international organisations more generally.

Joyce De Coninck is a post-doctoral researcher affiliated with Ghent University, Belgium, and a Scholar in Residence at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University, USA.