By — Hansin Kapoor

Abstract

In the 17th century, Westphalia defined the border as a physical wall. In the 21st century, Neocolonialism defines it as a wire transfer. This article investigates “Jurisdictional Laundering”, the strategic decoupling of sovereign power fromlegal liability. By synthesising Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) with Sovereignty Rentierism, the article highlights a regime in which the Global North treats human rights obligations as assets to be processed through third-party wardens. Through a Biometric Panopticon, wealthy states institutionalize a digital “State of Exception” where the migrant exists as Homo Sacer, physically intercepted but legally erased. This work asserts that externalization subverts the maxim qui facit per alium (He who acts through another does the act himself), allowing states to exercise imperial control over mobility while remaining “innocent” of the consequences.

Introduction

The current international order rests upon a profound and unsettling contradiction, while Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states the right of every individual to leave any country, there exists no correspondinguniversal right to enter another. Now, this fundamental asymmetry grants sovereign states an almost absolute power to exclude. For instance, in the current geopolitical climate, characterized by the conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran that escalated in early 2026, this tension has reached a breaking point. As thousands flee the black rain of oilfires in Tehran and the destruction in Lebanon, wealthy

nations are innovating beyond physical walls to manage the crisis. They utilize border externalization, a process where nations pay buffer states to intercept and detain migrants long before they reach Western shores. Externalization is not merely a policy shift, it is a neocolonial jurisprudence that seeks to decouple physical power from legal responsibility,and by moving the site of enforcement to foreign soil, powerful states engage in jurisdictional laundering. Therefore, allowing them to project force while insulating themselves from the legal and moral consequences of the violence they fund and direct.

Contractual Wardens and Neutralized Guilt

In order to understand how democratic states justify the funding of abusive militias or unaccountable coast guards, one must apply the lens of neutralization theory, developed by Gresham Sykes and David Matza, this theory explains how actors who generally adhere to social norms use specific techniques to justify deviant behaviour. In the context of thecurrent Middle Eastern conflict, states employ the denial of responsibility by claiming they are not the ones pulling the trigger or manning the detention centres in North Africa as they frame themselves as mere supporters of foreignsovereignty, even when they provide the drones, the funding, and the intelligence necessary for interceptions.

This dynamic has transformed buffer states into contractual wardens because their sovereignty is now a commodity sold to the Global North. As the Global Financial Integrity Report 2025 noted, laundering is not about finance, it is aboutviolence turned into numbers. Now, by delegating the dirty work to proxies, states manage to maintain a facade of humanitarianism while facilitating what scholars call state crime by proxy. This is a move toward a new penology where the goal is no longer the rehabilitation of individuals but the actuarial management of risky populations. In thisframework, the migrant is treated as a data point in a broader strategy of risk minimization. The violence of the border isneutralized as a technical necessity of national security.

Jurisdictional Laundering

At the core of externalization resides the concept of jurisdictional laundering, as this strategy is designed to create legal black holes where domestic law does not apply, and international law is rendered toothless. Delving on the work of Giorgio Agamben, the externalized zone becomes a state of exception where the law is suspended in the name of emergency. Historically, a state was held responsible for what happened on its territory. However, states are now innovating ways to decouple power from presence. The landmark case of Hirsi Jamaa and Others against Italy once threatened this model by ruling that push-backs on the high seas were illegal, in response of which, states developed the pullback, and therefore, instead of Western ships intercepting migrants, they now alert proxy forces to do it for them.

This legal innovation exploits a gap in current jurisprudence, while the European Court of Human Rights has tried toclose some of these loopholes, recent rulings in cases like S.S. and Others against Italy have shown a reluctance to adopt afunctional theory of jurisdiction. Such a theory would argue that if a state funds and directs an operation, it should belegally liable for the outcome regardless of whose waters the boat is in. Now, without this accountability,

the border becomes a site of legal evasion. States essentially use the sovereignty of poorer nations to launder their ownhuman rights obligations. As Hannah Arendt famously observed, the right to have rights is extinguished in the void between jurisdictions.

Biometric Imperialism and Algorithmic Warfare

The modern border is no longer a static fence, it is a portable and invisible digital wall composed of biometric databases and satellite arrays. This technological shift enables a form of algorithmic pre crime, which means, before a person even reaches a physical border, they have already been assessed for risk using actuarial justice models and this process is increasingly exported to the Global South through what is termed biometric imperialism. In India, the Aadhaar systemhas shown how mandatory digital identity can be used to link personal data to state surveillance.

We see the most extreme version of this in the warfare of the present day as the use of AI systems like the Gospel and Lavender to generate target recommendations represents a new historical leap, these systems turn everybody into an exploitable piece of data. When a war learns to see faces and correlate them with histories of calls and kinship, the enemyceases to be a force and becomes a concrete identity in a database, this is what Achille Mbembe calls necropolitics, which is the power to dictate who is able to live and who must die. The technology used to target individuals in conflict is thesame technology used to exclude them at the border, as a result, a system of statistical exclusion where the poor are categorized as risky before they ever attempt to move.

Sovereignty Rentierism

The geopolitics of the externalized border has given rise to sovereignty rentierism, this occurs when buffer states use their control over migration routes as coercive leverage against the Global North. While these nations believe they are gaining power by renting out their borders, they are actually falling into a sovereignty trap. By becoming appendages of foreign policy goals, their internal police and legal systems undergo a form of legal colonization. The UK Rwanda deal was aprimary example of this dynamic before its cancellation, therefore, by agreeing to host relocated asylum seekers inexchange for economic aid, nations become sites for the offshore processing of Western political problems.

From the perspective of Third World Approaches to International Law, or TWAIL, this is a modern manifestation of themandate system. It replicates colonial hierarchies where territory in the Global South is managed for the benefit of the Global North. The sovereignty of the buffer state is compromised as it becomes a rentier entity dependent on the continuation of migration crises. This arrangement does not solve the root causes of displacement, rather, it weaponizes migration and turns the human right to seek safety into a bargaining chip in a global marketplace. The current escalation between Iran and Israel only intensifies this as neighbours like Jordan and Türkiye brace for millions of refugees while navigating their strategic reliance on Western aid.

Conclusion

The trinity of state crime by proxy, jurisdictional laundering, and technological surveillance has created a world wherethe right to move is systematically stifled. We have moved beyond the age of the physical border into an era of the externalized frontier where the limits of the law are strategically exploited. To counter this, we must demand a new jurisprudence of transnational accountability. We need a concept of jus mobility that recognizes the right of the human body to exist in space without being datafied or externalized into a legal void. This requires moving beyond a territorial view of rights and adopting a functional theory of jurisdiction that holds states responsible for the impacts of their power. The work of groups like Forensic Architecture provides a vital model for this resistance. They demonstrate that the same technologies used to exclude can also be used to witness and hold power to account. The survival of the internationalhuman rights system depends on our ability to close the gaps where states currently hide their dirty work. We must ensure that the law follows the person, not just the flag.

About the Author

Hansin Kapoor is a law student at O.P. Jindal Global University whose work examines the intersection of international law, intelligence studies, and the evolving digital landscape of global borders.

Image Source: The European Union faces the migrant crisis – Cartooning for Peace