State sovereignty and international obligations in the protection of fundamental rights

By: Jorge Leyva

State sovereignty remains a foundational principle of international law. It structures jurisdiction, allocates authority and defines the capacity of states to regulate their internal affairs. That principle, however, has never operated as an unconditional licence. Its contemporary legal content is inseparable from the obligations voluntarily assumed through international instruments that constrain the manner in which power may be exercised, particularly where fundamental rights are affected.

The tension does not arise from the existence of international obligations, but from their selective invocation. States frequently affirm sovereignty when resisting external scrutiny, while simultaneously relying on international cooperation mechanisms that presuppose shared standards of legality. This asymmetry transforms sovereignty from a principle of responsibility into a shield against accountability, detached from its legal foundations.

From a legal perspective, sovereignty does not compete with international human rights obligations. It is redefined by them. When a state accepts treaty-based duties, it incorporates external limits into its own legal order. The exercise of sovereign power then becomes conditional upon compliance with those limits. Invoking sovereignty to justify conduct that produces prohibited effects is not an expression of autonomy. It is a refusal to operate within the legal framework the state has accepted.

This tension becomes particularly visible in areas involving security, migration control and criminal enforcement. Measures adopted in these fields are often justified by reference to national interest or public order, while their transnational effects are treated as incidental. When such measures foreseeably result in arbitrary detention, collective expulsion or exposure to ill-treatment, the sovereignty argument collapses into a formal assertion disconnected from legal causality.

The decisive element is not the location of the act, but the reach of its effects. International human rights law operates on the premise that responsibility follows control, not territory alone. Where a state exercises effective influence over a situation that produces a rights violation, the obligation to prevent that outcome is engaged, irrespective of whether the final harm occurs within or beyond its borders.

Judicial deference to sovereignty claims, when detached from this causal analysis, weakens the protective function of international law. Treating sovereignty as a threshold barrier rather than as a regulated competence allows states to externalise harm while retaining the benefits of cooperation. The legal order then tolerates a fragmentation of responsibility that undermines its own coherence.

The legal consequence is structural. Sovereignty cannot be invoked to neutralise obligations whose purpose is precisely to limit the effects of sovereign power. Where state action produces foreseeable violations of fundamental rights, international obligations operate as binding constraints, not optional considerations. Respect for sovereignty is preserved not by insulating power from control, but by ensuring that its exercise remains legally attributable, reviewable and bounded by the standards the state itself has accepted.