UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS: AN ANALYSIS OF STATES' OBLIGATIONS UNDER THE RIGHT TO LIFE IN OUTER SPACE

摘要

The proliferation of government and commercial activities raises important legal questions about the duties of States to observe and protect human rights in outer space. First, do human rights obligations apply extraterritorially to outer space? Second, if the answer to the former is yes, then what are those rights and to what extent are the rights modified in their application to space? There is very little discussion and analysis of human rights obligations and their application to outer space. In this paper, I analyze the intersection of international outer space law and human rights law to conclude that human rights obligations do apply to outer space. I have restricted the analysis in this paper to the right to life in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, due to limitations in considering every aspect of space/human rights law intersection. This Article is not intended to authoritatively resolve the questions in all areas, but to act as a starting point to stimulate discussion.