A/HRC/38/40 D. Extraterritorial human rights obligations and international solidarity 39. The Independent Expert believes that the issue of whether or not the human rights obligations assumed by States or other actors (as a consequence of the entry into force of various human rights treaties and the adoption of other human rights instruments) apply outside the boundaries of such States — i.e. whether a given State is duty bound as a result to respect such obligations beyond its borders — is a highly consequential one for the effort to realize human rights in as full a measure as possible the world over. 40. The ways in which this question of extraterritoriality intersects and interacts with human rights-based international solidarity is as important an issue, at least from the perspective of this mandate. For example, will the effort to ensure the enjoyment by all of the right of peoples and individuals to human rights-based international solidarity require States to protect, respect, fulfil and otherwise implement their international human rights obligations extraterritorially — at least some of the time? What, if any, will the problems with adopting a positive or negative answer to this question be? What are the limits of extraterritorial human rights obligations, especially in the context of State sovereignty and State vulnerabilities? Is it possible that human rights-based international solidarity can be achieved without an understanding of human rights obligations as having an extraterritorial dimension? These are the kinds of questions that the Independent Expert intends to study and discuss in a thematic report dedicated to this issue. E. Civil society and international solidarity 41. The significant role played by civil society as agents of sociopolitical and economic change within both States and the international system is now very well acknowledged. 17 These actors help to shape public opinion, drive policies, legitimize or delegitimize certain agents and forms of governance and push for social reform. They also tend to express solidarity with each other, and with individuals, groups and communities, both within and across the boundaries of the States in which they are located. 42. Against this background, the Independent Expert considers that it is important to study, comment on and report on the normative framework and conceptual apparatus that undergirds such expressions of human rights-based international solidarity by civil society groups; the ways in which civil society groups express human rights-based international solidarity; and the means through which this is done. The Independent Expert will also analyse the specific difficulties that these groups face when they attempt to express such solidarity, and any best practices that may be identified regarding the reaction of other actors to expressions of this type of solidarity. Further, he will explore the manner in which cross-border solidarity between civil society groups may be mobilized in a manner that is contrary to the fulfilment of human rights, drawing examples from populist movements around the world and from the global backlash against women’s and other minorities’ rights. F. Global citizenship and international solidarity 43. Against the background of the specific kind of globalization that now characterizes international sociopolitical and economic life, some authors have suggested — perhaps rather too optimistically as yet — that we now live in a “global neighbourhood”. 18 Regardless of the accuracy of this claim, it is clear that our globe is now more interconnected and integrated than it has even been in the past. What then are the implications of this undeniably greater global social integration for the conception of 17 18 See, in particular, some reports of the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, such as A/HRC/35/28 (para. 2) and A/HRC/32/36, as well as the report of the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, A/HRC/34/56 (paras. 21 and 36). Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighbourhood: The Report of the Commission on Global Governance (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995). 11