Mapping the UK’s Constitutional Relationship with Britain’s Overseas Territories in the Human Rights Sphere

At the time of the drafting of the European Convention on Human Rights, many European countries had significant colonies across the world and the way international human rights standards should apply in those colonies was a bone of contention that found itself reflected in what was known as the “colonial clause” which allows for the protections of the Convention to be applied and withdrawn from overseas territories with very little oversight or justification. Despite radical changes in the legal and political world since 1950, the ECHR still contains a “colonial clause” which is relied upon by the UK to justify differences in the ways human rights apply to its territories. While the UK has been keen over the past two decades to push for constitutional reviews in Overseas Territories in order to update human rights protections in line with international obligations, it has done very little to clarify its own constitutional relationships with Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories (CDOTs). These relationships have been put under strain in recent years over the issue of registers of beneficial ownership in CDOTs as well as in relation to human rights issues such as same-sex marriage and the need to assist overseas territories hit by devastating hurricanes. This chapter will look at the way the UK’s relationships with its Overseas Territories is framed in the context of the European Convention on Human Rights considering whether there is a need for reform, both domestically and in international human rights law to guarantee the principle of universality of human rights in the twenty-first century context.