This Event is hosted by the Oxford Institute of Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict and Oxford Transistional Justice Research.
Speaker: Dr Hannah Tonkin, Lawyer, UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. She completed a masters and doctorate in international law at the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, after having previously completed degrees in science and law at the University of Adelaide. She has worked as a lawyer at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and taught international law at the University of Oxford.
Summary: The past two decades have witnessed the rapid proliferation of private military and security companies (PMSCs) in armed conflicts around the world, with PMSCs participating in, for example, offensive combat, prisoner interrogation and the provision of advice and training. The extensive outsourcing of military and security activities has challenged conventional conceptions of the state as the primary holder of coercive power and raised concerns about the reduction in state control over the use of violence. Hannah Tonkin critically analyses the international obligations on three key states – the hiring state, the home state and the host state of a PMSC – and identifies the circumstances in which PMSC misconduct may give rise to state responsibility. This analysis will facilitate the assessment of state responsibility in cases of PMSC misconduct and set standards to guide states in developing their domestic laws and policies on private security.