A report was released last week by the Open Society Justice Initiative, penned by University of British Columbia professor James Stewart, on "Corporate War Crimes," a primer on how pillage can be tried as a war crime.
Interesting and contentious stuff. Apparently The Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Geneva Conventions of 1949 prohibit pillage, and most domestic jurisdictions and international courts include laws against pillage.
But what Stewart is getting at is more than just soldiers running amok on the battlefield. He wants to know whether corporations can be held accountable for wrongfully acquiring property through complicity with armed force. The clearest precedents for this were during World War II tribunals - IG Farben, a German company, was charged with exploiting the military occupation of France to obtain property without the proper consent of the lawful owner. That is pretty straight-forward pillage. Stewart goes on to show, however, that Farben and other companies were also found guilty of having received stolen goods, i.e. buying property that had been unlawfully acquired by a third party.
In the case of the Congo, Stewart argues that companies/countries could be found guilty of pillage of warehouses and stocks (as with the AFDL/Rwandan invasion of 1996) but also for buying minerals that were mined outside of legal concessions or in violation of Congolese law. One could see, also, how his argument could extend to any minerals mined through forced labor or even tainted by extortion or similar abuse.
Apparently the ICC does not have jurisdiction to try corporate crimes, but national courts do. Also, it will be difficult to prove mens rea, especially for buying stolen goods, although some jurisdictions are pretty lenient about this.
Seems to be a long way off in the Congo, but interesting stuff.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
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5 comments:
Thank you for posting this! I will be reading it immediately
I hope that one day that companies who commit crimes overseas no longer face impunity. Some disgusting practice has gone unpunished for far too long.
Hey Jason, very interesting stuff.
http://www.globalwitness.org/media_library_get.php/954/1288891176/englishsummary.pdf
Have you had a chance to read the Global Witness report on the failure by the British government to take action against British companies such as Thaisarco or Afrimex that are involved in direct deals with negative forces conducting illicit mining in the eastern Congo.
You can check on the following link for much more detailed reports:
http://www.globalwitness.org/media_library_detail.php/786/en/global_witness_report_faced_with_a_gun_what_can_yo
These are quite old reports but those institutions, companies or states cited here could make an interesting starting point.
Thanks, this is really interesting. On the issue of the jurisdiction of international courts though, the report says they have jurisdiction under certain conditions. See paras. 146-149 and 152.
That's interesting. I think there is a "confession" somewhere of James K., the head of APR or RDF about what they did in Congo. History is funny, today's heros will be tomorrow villains.lol
Militias in Congo commit terrorism. Corporations who fund or buy from these armed illegal groups should be held accountable, perhaps even a symbolic case for $1 could be registered against them in western international courts.
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