A good place to start the analysis of the Inter-American Court’s opinion is with the basic facts. While technically the advisory opinion is not a case, and therefore does not have a factual platform, the reality is that Colombia requested this opinion from the Court in 2016, expressing concerns about the threat posed by large-scale infrastructure projects in the Caribbean to the human rights of the islanders of the archipelago of San Andrés, located opposite Nicaragua in the Caribbean Sea. In 2013, Nicaragua announced plans for a “grand canal” connecting the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, though construction has not yet started. Serious questions have been raised about the potential environmental impact of the project. The relevance of the advisory opinion extends beyond this specific factual background, however. In fact, the Court explicitly noted that the questions addressed in its advisory opinion are of importance to all the world’s countries. That is because the questions before the Court concerned cutting-edge issues of international human rights law. II.ii. Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations One key question the court grappled with was this: Since environmental harm often crosses state boundaries, does the American Convention protect persons affected by environmental harm coming from another country? The answer is yes: The court explicitly said that states’ obligations under the convention extend to harms caused to people outside of their borders. To reach this answer, the Court analyzed in detail the scope of application of the American Convention on Human Rights. The convention, in Article 1 entitled “Obligation to respect rights,” establishes the duty of states “to respect the rights and freedoms recognized herein and to ensure to all persons subject to their jurisdiction the free and full exercise of those rights and freedoms.” The key element that determines the scope of this obligation is the term “jurisdiction.” Jurisdiction is a multifaceted term in international law. It can refer to the legal competence of an international tribunal to hear and decide a case; it can also refer to the basis upon which a state may exercise power, control, or authority, such as the jurisdiction of a State to prescribe and enforce laws in its territory or in respect of its nationals. In the context of the American Convention, a human rights convention, jurisdiction is the key that both defines and limits the obligation of the State, which is responsible to respect and guarantee the rights and freedoms of persons under its jurisdiction. The Inter-American Court reasoned that the term jurisdiction in the American Convention is not identical to territory. In its analysis, the Court examined the case law of the UN Human Rights Committee, the European Court of Human Rights, and other international legal sources that have recognized instances in which extraterritorial conduct by the state involves the exercise of its jurisdiction. Marcos Orellana – Remarks for Philippines CHR 23 & 24 May Hearing 4