The New Transporters of Weapons of Mass Destruction
Small arms and light weapons move swimmingly into war torn areas across the global South. Beyond the reach of border patrols (if they are present) former Eastern European pilots swoop in to make their deliveries on behalf of private company profiteers. Hugh Griffiths provides an inside look.
The Rise of Private Military Companies and the Legal Vacuum of Regulation
This paper discusses the rise of the private military industry as a challenge to contemporary international law. In recent times, the privatization of activities preserved by governments have been proposed and implemented;, such as communication facilities, garbage collection, electricity supply, immigration services and much more. Military operations have not been left out. The increasing privatization of military activities is proving to be a major challenge to international law. The literature on Private Military Companies (PMCs) is mind-boggling, but neither extensive nor exhaustive. As a new phenomenon, it receives situational attention. For example, when the operations of Executive Outcomes and Sandline International were unearthed by the press in the 90s,’ numerous scholarly material was written, but with distinct themes like the efficiency of the corporations and the human rights violations carried out, as well as the legal vacuum created by ex-professional soldiers banding up to create and legally incorporate a mercenary outfit. The issue of PMCs being present in weak states and ravaged war-torn zones is an understatement, yet these corporations are registered mostly in the U.S., U.K. and South Africa. The articles on this issue are usually highly polarized; opponents verses proponents of these corporations, as the activities of these outfits do not fit within any conventional classification as actors of war in the law of war.
This paper describes the history and definition of PMCs and analyses how the operations of these corporations affect human rights, sovereignty and states´ monopoly of violence. The paper also focuses on the legality of PMCs and proceeds to discuss how to regulate the industry. The paper concludes in favor of tougher regulatory controls through new international legal framework and national legislation to deal with mercenaries as decisively as with other non-state actors who wield violence.
The UN Peacebuilding Commission: the baby takes its first steps
Jacob Enoh-Eben examines the creation of the UN Peacebuilding Commission, its composition, mandate, purpose, modus operandi, and its initial activities.
Collective peace-keeping in West Africa
Linus Malu provides the background to the prospects for collective peace-keeping in West Africa. His report appraises conflict prevention and resolution methods employed by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). First, it examines the operations of the ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) in the region and evaluates the impact of the body in conflict resolution. Second, it examines the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security established in 1999 by the ECOWAS Heads of States in Lome, Togo. In the last section Linus Malu evaluates the impact of the Mechanism on conflict prevention and resolution in West Africa.
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Has Democracy Enhanced Development in Africa?
Whether democracy guarantees development and whether development depends on democracy remain hard to answer questions to any looking outside the continent for inspirations. From the East, we find examples of significant development without the blue prints of modern state democracy or liberal democracy while in the west we find significant contribution of the values of democracy to development endeavors. This article discusses this paradox and suggests that for Africa it is imperative to take the two on board.
Inclusive Transitional Justice through Truth Commissions: A Book Review
Title: Getting the Truth out of Truth Commissions: Lessons Learned from Five Case Studies
Author(s): Johannes Langer (editor), Miguel Barreto Henriques, Pedro Valenzuela
Publisher: Editorial Bonaventuriana, 2018
Post tenebras lux
The Burundi war is sordid like all the other wars in the world. For this reason it must not be singled out. Burundi is plunged into mourning by a violence that the international community, out of ignorance or oversimplification, tends to simply portray as an ethnic war between Hutus and Tutsis, fanned by ancestral antagonism between these two communities. It’s utterly wrong. The Burundi war is complex and frightfully modern. It is a war for trifling political power and control of the resources. It simply uses the most fallacious pretexts (ethnic group, region, political affiliation) to disguise its true face. In so doing, it utterly resembles so many other armed conflicts in the world