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81. Regulating Information Flows, Regulating Conflict: An Analysis of United States Conflict Minerals Legislation

Author:
Christiana Ochoa and Patrick J. Keenan
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Institution:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Abstract:
The focus of this paper is the connection between conflict and commercial activity. In particular, it focuses on the ongoing conflict in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that is funded, in large part, by the sale of conflict commodities – minerals, metals, and petroleum – that fund violent groups at their source and then enter legitimate markets and products around the world. Recently, attention has turned to how to regulate conflict commerce as a tool for divesting from violent conflict. In the United States, for example, the recently adopted Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act include a provision addressing conflict minerals originating from this region. The violent and secretive nature of conflict minerals transactions makes crafting effective regulation and policing strategies challenging. As a result the Dodd-Frank Act, like other domestic and international efforts, is designed in large part to discover, gather and disseminate information about the nature and scale of conflict commodities emanating from the DRC. This paper analyzes this legislation while also discussing a number of other current conflict commerce governance efforts. It observes the difficulty of regulating in the context of conflict and corruption and analyses the use of regulation as a tool for information- xtraction, information-forcing and information-dissemination as opposed to its use as a tool for directly proscribing undesirable behavior.
Political Geography:
United States and Democratic Republic of the Congo

82. Incentives and Survival in Violent Conflicts

Author:
Moshik Lavie and Christophe Muller
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Institution:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Abstract:
This paper analytically investigates the incentive scheme of perpetrators of violent conflicts. It provides a rational equilibrium framework to elicit how monetary incentives and survival considerations shape a combatant‟s decision to participate in a conflict. In the model, a leader decides to award soldiers monetary incentives. Civilians finance the militia via donations and soldiers decide on the actual fighting and indulge in looting. We explore the scheduled decision-making that takes place on the path toward a violent conflict and study the principal-agent relationship that exists between the leader and the militia. In addition, we analyze the effect of several internal factors (productivity and survival risk) and external factors (relative economic resources, opponents‟ military strength) on the intensity of the conflict.
Topic:
Economics

83. Enhancing Compliance with International Law by Armed Non-State Actors

Author:
Annyssa Bellal and Stuart Casey-Maslen
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Institution:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Abstract:
Enhancing compliance with international norms by armed non-state actors is central to efforts to improve the protection of civilians in armed conflict. Limited engagement with such actors, as well as lack of clarity as to the precise nature and extent of the international legal regimes that are applicable to them, constitute significant barriers to achieving better compliance. In this article the authors argue for international human rights law to be more widely seen as imposing direct obligations upon armed nonstate actors and for counter-terrorism legislation not to be interpreted so as to preclude engagement on positive respect for humanitarian norms. What is needed is greater engagement with armed non-State actors, not less.

84. Regulation of Private Military Companies

Author:
Alexander Kees
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Institution:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Abstract:
The increasing use of private military companies by states in armed conflict raises questions regarding the regulation of those non-state actors. However, even though the privatization of core state functions might be an emerging phenomenon with respect to its extent and quality, there is no legal vacuum for the activities of private military contractors. According to international humanitarian law, states must ensure respect for the ius in bello and enforce applicable international law also with respect to private contractor personnel if they are charged with functions governed by international law. Against this background, the challenge for future regulation is on the national and administrative level. States must intensify their efforts to implement existing standards.

85. Armed Forces as Carrying both the Stick and the Carrot? Humanitarian Aid in U.S. Counterinsurgency Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq

Author:
Alice Gadler
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Institution:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Abstract:
The fight against insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq has led the U.S. and its allies to devote growing attention and resources to counterinsurgency strategies, stability operations and civil-military operations. Humanitarian and development assistance have acquired an important role in military strategies. However, the activities carried out by armed forces in the field of humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan and Iraq have been criticized for blurring the distinction between civilian and military actors and thus increasing the risk of being targeted for humanitarians and civilians. The article analyzes the conduct of U.S. armed forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and the challenges it has posed to humanitarian actors. It then examines U.S. military doctrines and manuals and argues that their most recent versions have increasingly taken into account the needs of humanitarian actors and the principles of humanitarian action, but reasons for concern remain. The engagement of the military in humanitarian assistance has not been definitely limited. In addition, humanitarians should be careful in their relationships with the armed forces in the field of information-sharing.
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, and Iraq

86. Settling Trade Disputes over Natural Resources: Limitations of International Trade Law to Tackle Export Restrictions

Author:
Stormy-Annika Mildner and Gitta Lauster
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Institution:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Abstract:
In the light of rising competition, scarce natural resources are increasingly perceived as a potential national security risk. Hence, governments are increasingly intervening in primary commodity markets to secure domestic supply at lower prices, for instance, by restricting exports through tariffs and quotas. While limiting exports may be justified in certain cases such as temporary shortages of food supply, they are often a second-best policy tool to address domestic market failures, risking international trade distortions. Some import-dependent countries have therefore lobbied for an update of WTO regulations to curtail the use of export restrictions; others have turned to preferential trade agreements (PTAs) to achieve stricter disciplines. In this paper, the following questions are addressed: What are the current WTO rules regulating export restrictions on natural resources, and what are their limitations? Are PTAs better equipped to prevent trade distortions through export restrictions? To answer these questions, we confine our analysis mostly to Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), not considering the multitude of one-sided preferential agreements.

87. Resource Conflicts over Arable Land in Food Insecure States: Creating an United Nations Ombudsman Institution to Review Foreign Agricultural Land Leases

Author:
Anastasia Telesetsky
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Institution:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Abstract:
In the last decade of globalization, States in the Middle East, East Asia, Europe, and North America have looked towards Africa and Southeast Asia for opportunities to lease for 30-50 years large tracts of arable land for production of commodity crops and biofuels in order to meet the needs of home markets. Facing their own governance challenges, States in Africa and Southeast Asia have leased land to private foreign investors without requiring any environmental review or mitigation of the proposed land leases. This paper argues that in food insecure states the recent flurry of land leasing activity to foreign agribusiness is likely to lead to unintended long term consequences for the ecology in land-leasing States by depleting the already fragile environment through monocropping, chemical pesticide and fertilizer applications, and large scale irrigation. This paper argues that international investment law may provide foreign investors with legal protection if land leasing States in the future decide to regulate the leases in a manner that discriminates against large agribusiness. The current proposals for self-regulatory voluntary codes of conduct do not provide sufficient oversight over the leasing process to protect the public's interest in a healthy and productive environment against foreign investors who have under the current lease structure no incentive to improve the land that they are leasing. The creation of an United Nations based ombudsman to provide legal and technical oversight and support for States making long-term leases has greater potential than a voluntary code for ensuring a balanced negotiation among the interests of host State governments for investment, investors for arable land, and the public for long-term sustainability.
Topic:
United Nations
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Middle East, East Asia, North America, and Southeast Asia

88. Overcoming State-Centrism in International Water Law: 'Regional Common Concern' as the Normative Foundation of Water Security

Author:
Bjørn-Oliver Magsig
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Institution:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Abstract:
The peaceful management of the world's freshwater resources is one of the most challenging tasks the international community is facing. While 'water war' is a catchphrase mainly used by the media, one cannot overstate the disruptive force water disputes have on all aspects of socio-economic development and the environment. Furthermore, the accelerating global water crisis draws a dark picture in which the future may look nothing like the present. With rising demand and declining availability of key natural resources, the world might soon face a 'perfect storm' of food, energy and water shortages. A simultaneous occurrence of these crises would seriously threaten global stability, and thus endanger the very foundation of international security.

89. Between the Scylla of Water Security and Charybdis of Benefit Sharing: The Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement – Failed or Just Teetering on the Brink?

Author:
Dereje Zeleke Mekonnen
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Institution:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Abstract:
The threat of water-related conflicts is comparatively more real and serious in the Middle East and North Africa hydrographic region where the Nile is found. Ominous predictions about water being the next casus belli in the region abound. There are many conflict determinants in the Nile basin which lend much credence to the predictions and the basin's proneness to conflict is quite evident. The unprecedented positive rapport brought about by the launching of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) and the enormous hope and optimism evoked by its lofty Shared Vision explain the unprecedented serenity and cooperative atmosphere the basin has witnessed over the past decade. The decade-long effort to work out and agree on an inclusive legal and institutional framework for the basin has, due to the cunning interpolation of the treacherous, non-legal concept of 'water security', ended up in failure., The subsequent shift to and endorsement of benefit sharing as an alternative, simple and cure-all solution to the Nile waters question has further dimmed the prospect for the realization of the Shared Vision which now sounds more like a pipe dream than a realizable vision. Whether these adverse developments would finally pave the way for the ominous predictions to come to pass is as much unlikely as it is perplexing. It will be argued, in this paper, that the likelihood of violent conflicts over the Nile waters is an unlikely scenario, the more likely turn of events being further continuation of the iniquitous status quo.
Political Geography:
Africa, Middle East, and North Africa

90. Information Warfare and Civilian Populations: How the Law of War Addresses a Fear of the Unknown

Author:
Lucian Dervan
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Institution:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Abstract:
Imagine a civilian communications system is being temporarily relied upon by an opposing military force for vital operations. If one launches a computer network attack against the communications system, the operation may disable the opposing force's ability to function adequately and, as a result, prompt their surrender. The alternative course of action is to launch a traditional kinetic weapons attack in the hopes of inflicting enough casualties on the troops to induce surrender. Given these options, the law of war would encourage the utilization of the computer network attack because it would result in less unnecessary suffering. But is the same true if we are unsure of the collateral consequences of the computer network attack on a large civilian population that also relies on this communications system? For instance, because civilians use the same communications system to gather critical information, disabling the system might result in rioting, civil disorder, serious injuries, and deaths. Further, civilians may be unable to call for help, seek out medical assistance, or locate emergency response centers. Given these unknown yet potentially severe collateral consequences to civilians, it becomes less clear that a proportionality analysis under the law of war would favor the computer network attack over the traditional kinetic operation. In this article, Professor Lucian E. Dervan examines the application of the law of war to information operations and analyses the role of the Geneva Convention's utilitarian goals in determining the validity of computer network attacks against dual-use civilian objectives.
Political Geography:
Geneva

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