Suchergebnisse

Introduction -- Extractive sector investment in conflict countries : the situation in Afghanistan -- The relevant legal framework : investment protection in conflict settings -- The relevant legal framework of human rights protection : ESC rights and the right to water -- Human rights and investment: analysing the relationship -- Business and human rights : a tool for investment and human rights protection in armed conflict? -- Conclusion : implications for Afghanistan.

Abstract
This article focuses on the proportionality analysis carried out by international investment tribunals when the protection of foreign investment adversely impacts the protection of human rights. International investment arbitrators are increasingly called to adjudicate awards which require a 'balancing' between the so-called rights of investors, protected as they are by relevant international investment agreements (iia), and the rights of third parties affected by foreign investment. Such balancing often entails, at its core, a controversial juxtaposition between investment protections and human rights protections. In this article, I argue that a balancing between investors' rights and human rights is neither possible nor desirable. This argument is crucial to demystify existing assumptions surrounding the use of balancing and proportionality in international investment arbitration as a way of successfully reconciling competing interests as well as conflicting protection obligations vested upon a host State.

This Article focuses on the accountability challenges raised by the increased involvement of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSC) in migration control. I argue that migration control activities outsourced to PMSC can be classified as high-risk operations for the purposes of the application of relevant business and human rights standards. This reclassification of migration control activities as high-risk business operations, in turn, has two significant implications in terms of establishing accountability for PMSC's wrongful conduct. First, it acknowledges that the privatization of migration control, especially within the context of continued containment and deterrence trends, entails a high risk of human rights abuses to which PMSC may contribute, both directly and indirectly. Second, this reclassification enables us to identify heightened obligations vested upon the home state of a PMSC, as well as the heightened responsibility of PMSC themselves. The article also examines what these heightened obligations and responsibilities entail.

In this article I examine the current European refugee 'crisis' by challenging, from a theoretical perspective, the way in which the European Union (EU) has used the increased number of deaths in the Mediterranean as an opportunity to frame recent migration flows as an emergency which, by definition, can only be addressed through the adoption of exceptional measures. Throughout the article, I engage with the work of Giorgio Agamben on biopolitics and state of exception to illustrate, first, the need to rethink the way in which borders are defined and used (e.g. externalised) within the context of the European refugee 'crisis'. Second, Agamben's work is useful to understand what moves the externalisation and privatisation of migration, and to ascertain how international law has enabled the emergence of this 'crisis' framing, whilst at the same time partly losing its ability to challenge EU policies. I argue that the posture of humanitarianism adopted by the EU masks the fact that the appalling situation in which refugees are abandoned is not accidental but inherent to the enhanced measures adopted by the EU and its member states as part of the European Agenda.

This article examines the involvement of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSC) in both shaping and implementing the European Agenda on Migration (European Agenda), launched by the European Union in May 2015. The migration policies which have since been adopted have increasingly enabled the outsourcing to private security contractors of various border control operations, including those related to forced returns, administrative detention and security services for the Italian and Greek 'hotspots'. The article argues that PMSC frame, shape and entrench militarized responses in the European Agenda. It also contends that the current context of the European refugee 'crisis' meets the conditions of a high-risk context, as understood within the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP). This re-definition of the refugee 'crisis' as a high-risk context, in turn, enables the identification of heightened human rights obligations of home states and responsibilities of companies when implementing the UNGP.

© 2018 The Author(s). This article examines the current European refugee 'crisis' by challenging, from a theoretical perspective, the way in which the European Union (EU) has used the increased number of deaths in the Mediterranean as an opportunity to frame recent migration flows as an emergency that, by definition, can only be addressed through the adoption of exceptional measures. The analysis engages with the work of Giorgio Agamben on biopolitics and state of exception to illustrate, first, the need to rethink the way in which borders are defined and used (for example, externalized) within the context of the European refugee 'crisis'. Second, Agamben's work is useful to understand what moves the externalization and privatization of migration, and to ascertain how international law has enabled the emergence of this 'crisis' framing, whilst, at the same time, partly losing its ability to challenge EU policies. The article argues that the posture of humanitarianism adopted by the EU masks the fact that the appalling situation in which refugees are abandoned is not accidental but, rather, inherent to the enhanced measures adopted by the EU and its member states as part of the European Agenda on Migration.