UBC prof seeks corporate accountability
It was known as the Great War of Africa and the deadliest conflict worldwide since World War II. By 2008, the war that began in the Democratic Republic of Congo and involved eight African nations had killed 5.4 million people.
At the crux of the war, and what many argue fueled the conflict in Congo and other African regions, was the growing availability of small arms.
Where were these weapons coming from and why were the suppliers not being held accountable?
It’s these questions that were the primary catalyst for UBC Law professor James Stewart to pursue a career in international criminal law, specifically focusing on the relationship between commerce and atrocity.
“International criminal justice focuses too much on the human rights types of issues,” explains Stewart. “We as prosecutors wait until the violence has run its course and then we mop up when we prosecute for murder, torture, rape and so on.”
In his work, Stewart argues that it is much more effective to prosecute businesses involved in selling weapons to notoriously brutal regimes, before all the violence unravels.
Stewart’s work in this area has been recognized internationally and is part of a major shift in international criminal justice, where governing bodies are becoming more conscious of the link between business and crime, and more sensitive to the importance of holding corporations accountable.
Stewart, who before joining the Faculty of Law at UBC in 2009 worked as a prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, recently began a fellowship with the Open Society Institute. As part of this fellowship, Stewart is writing a manual setting out the legal basis for prosecuting arms vendors for their involvement in international crimes, such as war crimes and genocide. Stewart argues that prosecuting corporations and their representatives for international crimes would enable courts to influence the trajectory of ongoing conflicts, rather than merely dispensing justice once violence has run its course.
Stewart describes these activities in conflict zones like Congo and Rwanda as a vicious triangle.
“At the apex of this triangle is the continuation of arms violence characterized by human rights violation. In the bottom right hand corner is illegal exploitation of natural resources and in the other corner is illicit arms trafficking.
“Each of these flows into each other, creating a downwards spiral into darkness which means that the war in Congo and other similar conflicts around the world become self-sustaining war economies. This becomes a win-win situation for belligerents but intractable violence for civilians.”
Stewart hopes that his manual will give activists and policymakers new and powerful tools to compel corporate compliance in the arms trade, and offer new insights into the potential of international criminal justice. While his work is in response to the events that have taken place in Congo, he hopes that it can be used as a template for arms transfers in all other countries.
The arms industry is a strange thing,” says Stewart. “When the world’s economy took a downturn, the arms industry flourished. We’ve flooded the world with weapons and studies have shown that weapons kill approximately 2,000 people a week. There needs to be international standards for weapon distribution.”
Stewart’s efforts recently garnered him the inaugural Antonio Cassese Prize for International Criminal Law Studies. The award is for the most original and innovative paper published in the Journal of International Criminal Studies. His article, “Atrocity, Commerce and Accountability:
The International Criminal Liability of Corporate Actors,” features research from part of his PhD thesis, conducted at Columbia University, which focuses on corporate responsibility for pillaging natural resources.
“The fact that they are recognizing my work just shows that these are not radical ideas, but important areas of criminal justice that must be explored,” says Stewart.
