Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

I-Law Adv. – 1AC– Internals 1/2

International law is inevitable – US participation is key to modeling and its effectiveness

Institute for Energy and Environmental Research 2 (and the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, http://www.ieer.org/reports/treaties/execsumm.pdf, AD: 6/23/10) jl

The evolution of international law since World War II is largely a response to the demands of states and individuals living within a global society with a deeply integrated world economy. In this global society, the repercussions of the actions of states, non-state actors, and individuals are not confined within borders, whether we look to greenhouse gas accumulations, nuclear testing, the danger of accidental nuclear war, or the vast massacres of civilians that have taken place over the course of the last hundred years and still continue. Multilateral agreements increasingly have been a primary instrument employed by states to meet extremely serious challenges of this kind, for several reasons. They clearly and publicly embody a set of universally applicable expectations, including prohibited and required practices and policies. In other words, they articulate global norms, such as the protection of human rights and the prohibitions of genocide and use of weapons of mass destruction. They establish predictability and accountability in addressing a given issue. States are able to accumulate expertise and confidence by participating in the structured system offered by a treaty. However, influential U.S. policymakers are resistant to the idea of a treaty-based international legal system because they fear infringement on U.S. sovereignty and they claim to lack confidence in compliance and enforcement mechanisms. This approach has dangerous practical implications for international cooperation and compliance with norms. U.S. treaty partners do not enter into treaties expecting that they are only political commitments by the United States that can be overridden based on U.S. interests. When a powerful and influential state like the United States is seen to treat its legal obligations as a matter of convenience or of national interest alone, other states will see this as a justification to relax or withdraw from their own commitments. If the United States wants to require another state to live up to its treaty obligations, it may find that the state has followed the U.S. example and opted out of compliance.
Despite illegality of PMC’s under I-Law, the US is expanding PMC’s in Afghanistan and Iraq

Higgins 7 (Alexander, Associated Press Staff Writer, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-10-17-3392316246_x.htm, AD: 6/23/10) jl

Although the use of mercenaries is discouraged in international rules of conduct of war, the hiring of foreign soldiers by one country for use in a third is specifically illegal only for the 30 countries that ratified a 1989 treaty. The U.S. and Iraq are among the many countries that never signed the accord.

"The trend toward outsourcing and privatizing various military functions by a number of member states in the past 10 years has resulted in the mushrooming of private military and security companies," the U.N. panel's report said.

The "tremendous increase" in the number of such companies -- including those working for the U.S. State and Defense departments -- has occurred in Afghanistan and Iraq, said the report, which will be presented to the U.N. General Assembly next month.

A joint U.S.-Iraqi panel has been created to review the practices of security companies, and Congress has opened inquiries into the role of the contractors. Multiple U.S. investigations into the Baghdad shooting are under way.

Gomez del Prado said the panel has been studying the use of contractors for two years and found that they were being hired from all over the world.

I-Law Adv. – 1AC– Internals 2/2

Domestic jurisdiction on PMC’s is key to I-law

Jennings 6 (Kathleen, Researcher M.Phil in Politics, St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, www.fafo.no/pub/rapp/532/532.pdf, AD: 6/22/10) jl

Three problems in legal responses to PMC’s were identified above: confusion over the applicability of existing law; lack of enforcement of existing law; and simple lack of law. Creating more effective legal responses to the private military industry will require a concerted response to remedy these railings by legislators, policymakers, and legal activists at national and international levels.

At the international level, an important step would be the expansion of the mandate of the International Criminal Court to include legal persons within the scope of the Court's jurisdiction, so that prosecution for corporate violations of international law could be brought in an international forum. This would send a strong message to private military companies - and any other companies operating outside their home jurisdictions, including resource extraction companies -that violations of international humanitarian and criminal law will be taken seriously. Relatedly, domestic civil or criminal actions against companies implicated in such crimes would be an extremely effective deterrent to criminal misbehaviour, particularly when combined with regulation combating the "offshoring" of PMC’s. In both instances, unfortunately, the political and prosecutorial will to expand ICC jurisdiction or bring actions domestically has been thus far lacking.41 Conversely, attempts could be made to prosecute PMC’s for international crimes on the basis of the argument that they are agents of the state. This approach would also require a higher level of political will to hold corporate actors accountable than has heretofore been evident.

At a national level, the obvious remedy is for countries lacking regulatory regimes to establish them, without waiting for the promulgation of international regulation. Again, the registration and licencing schemes outlined above could be useful models to emulate, so long as oversight, monitoring, and reporting are mandated as a term of licencing or as separate regulation. Jurisdictional issues could also be clarified through the establishment (or expansion and implementation) of regulation dictating that civilian contractors working for all government agencies be subject to that government's military or civilian codes of justice. Further, militaries that use contractors in support of military operations alongside their regular armed forces must promulgate clear field rules for military commanders to use in managing those contractors. Incidentally, these rules should not be written by the contractors themselves, as has occurred in the United States - with the PMC MPRI paid to prepare the field manual governing Pentagon rules for contractors on the battlefield (Werve 2004).

National jurisdictions could also impose legal standards by putting conditions into government contracts to the effect that PMC’s be considered subject to the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols, thus making it easier for domestic prosecutions to proceed on the basis of violations of those conventions. Such contractual obligations could, for example, have provided a means by which to domestically prosecute Titan and CAC1, the contractors involved in the Abu Ghraib scandal, on the grounds of violation of international law (torture and cruel, humiliating, and degrading treatment). Such a condition could also present interesting dilemmas, for example in the case of non-U.S. contractors working on or with the U.S. military prison base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Bush administration has consistently declared that it does not consider the prisoners confined in Guantanamo to be entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, claiming instead that they are "unlawful combatants" outside the Conventions' purview.42 This view is almost unanimously rejected outside the United States. Thus, if such contract conditions were in place (alongside a home state licencing and oversight regime), a foreign company providing services to the U.S. base in Cuba - such as the Norwegian concern Aker Kvarrner - could theoretically be liable for actions in support of a situation that its own government considers a violation of the Geneva Conventions, even if the client it works for considers it legal. It is worth noting, however, that a unilateral contracting requirement to adhere to the Geneva Conventions would probably not entitle PMC employees to POW protections outside the jurisdiction of the home state.