... And a conference on Private Military Companies

As a quick follow up to my earlier post, a conference that may be of interest to readers - particularly Francophone readers - of the GAL blog has been brought to my attention:

Colloque
Université d’Auvergne - Faculté de droit de Clermont-Ferrand

Lucrum in bello:
Les entreprises militaires et de sécurité privées dans le monde contemporain

Clermont-Ferrand

4-5 mars 2010

The full programme is available here (and here). There is clearly much that will be of real interest from a GAL perspective, with individual sessions on "le cadre juridique des entreprises militaires et de sécurité privées" and "les questions de responsabilité naissant de l'activité des entreprises militaires et de sécurité privées" (both of the Companies themselves and of the entities that make us of them); and a round table on the issue of "Quel contrôle exercer sur les entreprises militaires et de sécurité privées?".

As far as I can see, registration is free - just contact christiane.baroukh@u-clermont1.fr. Looks like a very interesting event, for those linguistically and geographically able...

New publication on private military companies...

The issues surrounding the use of private military companies have long been of more than tangential interest to the field of global administrative law; it represents in many ways the paradigmatic example of "outsourcing" of public functions (indeed, the public function par excellence) to private actors.

The recent volume edited by Simon Chesterman and Angelina Fisher, Private Security, Public Order: The Outsourcing of Public Services and its Limits (OUP, November 2009) deals squarely with the GAL aspects of this issue. The introductory chapter is available in full here. This is the second edited volume emerging from New York University School of Law's Institute for International Justice project on private military and security companies; the first, From Mercenaries to Market: The Rise and Regulation of Private Military Companies, edited by Chesterman and Chia Lehnardt, was published by OUP in 2007.

Here is the (edited) blurb from the new volume:

Private actors are increasingly taking on roles traditionally arrogated to the state. Both in the industrialized North and the developing South, functions essential to external and internal security and to the satisfaction of basic human needs are routinely contracted out to non-state agents. In the area of privatization of security functions, attention by academics and policy makers tends to focus on the activities of private military and security companies, especially in the context of armed conflicts, and their impact on human rights and post-conflict stability and reconstruction...

[This volume] looks at the transformations in the nature of state authority. Drawing on insights from work on privatization, regulation, and accountability in the emerging field of global administrative law, the book examines private military and security companies through the wider lens of private actors performing public functions. In the past two decades, the responsibilities delegated to such actors - especially but not only in the United States - have grown exponentially. The central question of this volume is whether there should be any limits on government capacity to outsource traditionally "public" functions. Can and should a government put out to private tender the fulfillment of military, intelligence, and prison services? Can and should it transfer control of utilities essential to life, such as the supply of water? This discussion incorporates numerous perspectives on regulatory and governance issues in the private provision of public functions, but focuses primarily on private actors offering services that impact the fundamental rights of the affected population.

And the table of contents:

Introduction — Simon Chesterman & Angelina Fisher

Part I: Accountability gaps
1. The privatization of violence — Michael Likosky
2. The responsibility of states — Olivier De Schutter
3. Accountability to whom? — Angelina Fisher

Part II: Lessons from other sectors
4. The privatization continuum — Daphne Barak-Erez
5. Private prisons and the democratic deficit — Alfred C. Aman, Jr.
6. Regulatory choices in the privatization of infrastructure — Mariana Mota Prado
7. Human rights and self-regulation in the apparel industry — Rebecca DeWinter-Schmitt

Part III: Limits
8. Police informants — Jacqueline Ross
9. Intelligence services — Simon Chesterman
10. Peacekeeping — Chia Lehnardt

11. Conclusion: Private security, public order — Simon Chesterman & Angelina Fisher

Essential reading for those working in this particular field, and well worth a look for anyone interested in the public/private nexus within the field of GAL.

New periodical: Journal of International Peacekeeping

The first issue of the Journal of International Peacekeeping has just been published, and the full text of all the articles are available online.

The Journal of International Peacekeeping is devoted to reporting upon and analyzing international peacekeeping with an emphasis upon legal and policy issues, but is not limited to these issues. Topics include inter alia peacekeeping, peace, war, conflict resolution, diplomacy, international law, international security, humanitarian relief, humanitarian law, and terrorism. The journal is of scholarly quality but is not narrowly theoretical. It provides the interested public - diplomats, civil servants, politicians, the military, academics, journalists, and NGO employees - with an up-to-date source of information on peacekeeping, enabling them to keep abreast of the most important developments in the field. Peacekeeping is treated in a pragmatic light, seen as a form of international military cooperation for the preservation or restoration of international peace and security. Attention is focused not only on UN peacekeeping operations, but other missions as well.

The Journal of International Peacekeeping is the continuation of the journal and yearbook International Peacekeeping, founded in 1994.

Of course, from our perspective, the most interesting issues relate to the accountability of international organizations (and perhaps of private military companies) for the actions of their peacekeepers, whether taken out in furtherence of their mandate, or in blatant abuse of their position. This is a range of topics on which I have blogged a couple of times before. I've only had time for a quick look, but there are a range of articles in the first volume of the Journal of International Peacekeeping that are of interest (and will have to be added to the GAL Bbiliography): One on the role of the UN in promoting the rule of law in post-conflict societies; on the ECtHR's Behrami decision; another on the House of Lords' Al Jedda judgment; and another on the immunity of the UN over Srebrenica before a Dutch court. There are also some relevant reviews of books on UN peacekeeping in Lebanon, Somalia and Kosovo, legal implications of peacekeeping, on international territorial administration, and on the "unintended consequences" of peacekeeping missions.

That's a lot of GAL for the first issue of a journal. Definitely one worth keeping an eye on...

More on IOs, Peacekeeping and Attribution...

Just to keep things ticking over on here, I wanted to post a quick link to this interesting and detailed analysis by Antonios Tzanakopoulos over at the EJIL:Talk! blog on the vexed issues of attribution of the conduct of peacekeeping forces to the international organizations that have instigated or approved their presence. He focuses in particular on the issues surrounding the use of private military companies (PMCs), and concludes that here, at least where they are employed by IOs directly, attribution of their conduct is pretty much automatic. If, that is, the ILC´s Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations have called it right. Draft Article 4(1) states:

The conduct of an organ or agent of an international organization in the performance of functions of that organ or agent shall be considered as an act of that organization under international law whatever position the organ or agent holds in respect of the organization.

As Tzanakopoulos notes, any PMC hired by an IO would automatically become an agent of the latter, and thus attribution of their conduct to the IO in question would be similarly automatic. Which makes it significantly easier to attribute the conduct of PMCs to IOs than it does that of national forces used in peacekeeping missions (where "effective control" must be demonstrated), and - perhaps more surprsingly - the conduct of PMCs to States that employ their services (in which case, according to Tzanakopoulos, "one would have to argue basically either that the PMSC exercises elements of governmental authority or that it is directed or (effectively) controlled by that State). He then goes on to examine in more detail this difference, and other aspects of the issues surrounding attribution of peacekeepers´ conduct to IOs. Well worth a read.