against cross-border trafficking, notwithstanding a Convention obligation to do so – arising from Article 1 (the obligation to respect human rights), read together with Article 4. 9. This Court’s Grand Chamber held in Ilaşcu and Others v. Moldova and Russia,4 that the applicants in that case were within Russia’s Article 1 jurisdiction, and Russia was responsible for the acts of which they complained because there was a continuous and uninterrupted link of responsibility on the part of Russia for their fate. Mutatis mutandis, there would ordinarily be a continuous and uninterrupted link for the purposes of an individual’s well-founded complaints of Article 4 violations commencing with a Contracting Party’s failure to take all reasonable measures to protect that person against cross-border trafficking, and in circumstances where the individual was eventually trafficked outside the Contracting Party’s territory. 10. Indeed, as the Court recalled in Issa and Turkey,5 the Convention’s notion of jurisdiction is not exclusively limited to the Contracting Parties’ national territory.6 In exceptional circumstances, acts carried out by Contracting Parties outside their territory, or within their territory, but producing extraterritorial effects, may constitute the exercise by them of their jurisdiction. In Issa, the Court held that accountability for Convention violations arises from the fact that the obligation to respect human rights under Article 1 of the Convention could not be interpreted as allowing Contracting Parties to perpetrate Convention violations on the territory of another State that they could not perpetrate on their own territory. 11. By analogy with Issa, when a Contracting Party is under a Convention obligation (arising jointly under Article 1 and, for example, Article 4) to act, both within and, when necessary, outside its territory, and, instead, the Contacting Party fails to do so, such a failure will constitute an exercise of jurisdiction on the Contracting Party’s part. In light of this, with respect to well-founded Article 4 complaints, the obligation to respect human rights under Article 1 cannot be interpreted as permitting the Contracting Party in question to circumvent its Article 4 Convention obligations – such as those arising from its initial failure to take reasonable steps to protect the individual concerned from being trafficked across the Contracting Party’s borders – solely because some of the effects of the Contracting Party’s failure occurred outside its territory. In those circumstances, the obligation to respect human rights under Article 1 requires that the Convention be interpreted in such a way as not allowing the Contracting Party in question to avoid accountability for its failure simply because such failure produced some extraterritorial effects, such as is the case of trafficking across borders, if, instead, the Contracting Party in question would be held accountable whenever the effects of its failure occurred exclusively in its territory, as it would be the case in respect of domestic trafficking. 12. Moreover, in Dobrescu v Romania, the Court referred to Drozd and Bankovic and went on to observe, by reference to Ilascu (Merits), that pursuant to the case-law of the Court: “[…] even in the absence of effective control of a territory outside its borders, the State still has a positive obligation under Article 1 of the Convention to take the diplomatic, economic, judicial or other measures that it is in its power to take and are in accordance with international law to secure to the applicants the rights guaranteed by the Convention.”7 13. In conclusion, to properly assess whether an individual was within the Contracting Party’s jurisdiction within the meaning of Article 1 at all material times for purposes of their complaint of Convention violations, the Convention and this Court’s jurisprudence require the focus to be on the acts or omissions of the Contracting Party in question that are said to have led – or are capable to have led – to the violations of Convention rights as alleged by the individual concerned. 14. Thus, in circumstances where: 1) the individual concerned has been trafficked out of the Contracting Party’s territory; 2) but for the Contracting Party’s failure to comply with its Convention’s and other international law obligations – including to protect the individual concerned against being trafficked outside its territory – the said individual may not have been trafficked outside the Contracting Party’s territory; 3) the Contracting Party knew or ought to have known that the individual concerned was at a real risk of being trafficked abroad; and 4) the Contracting Party’s obligations continue to apply because the violations are ongoing, and there is a continuous and uninterrupted link of responsibility on the part of that Contracting Party 4 ECtHR , Ilaşcu and Others v. Moldova and Russia, Grand Chamber Judgment, 8 July 2004, application no. 48787/99. 5 ECtHR, Issa and Others v. Turkey, judgment, 16 November 2004, application no. 31821/96. 6 “The term ‘jurisdiction’ is not limited to the national territory of the High Contracting Parties; their responsibility can be involved because of acts of their authorities producing effects outside their own territory (see the Commission’s decisions on the admissibility of Applications no. 1611/62, X v. the Federal Republic of Germany, 25 September 1965, Yearbook, vol. 8, p. 158; no. 6231/73, Hess v. the United Kingdom, 28 May 1975, Decisions and Reports (DR) no. 2, p. 72; nos. 6780/74 and 6950/75, Cyprus v. Turkey, 26 May 1975, DR 2, p. 125; nos. 7289/75 and 7349/76, X and Y v. Switzerland, 14 July 1977, DR 9, p. 57; no. 9348/81, W. v. the United Kingdom, 28 February 1983, DR 32, p. 190)’).” App. No. 12747/87, Drozd and Janousek v. France and Spain, ECommHR, 26 June 1992, 14 EHRR (1992) 445. 7 ECtHR, Dobrescu v Romania (2010) App. no. 60681/00, para 101. 2