Teacher	Bart Klem
Room	303
Time	10:15 - 12:00
Slides	Click here for slides
Preparation	Please read: Klem, Bart and Sidharthan Maunaguru (2017) ‘Insurgent Rule as Sovereign Mimicry and Mutation: Governance, Kingship and Violence in Civil Wars’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 59(3): 629-656. Fortin, Katharine (2016) ‘The Application of Human Rights Law to Everyday Civilian Life Under Rebel Control,’ Netherlands International Law Review, 63(2): 161–181. Schoiswohl, Michael (2001) ‘De Facto Regimes and Human Rights Obligations: The Twilight Zone of Public International Law’, Austrian Review of International and European Law 6: 45-90.

Non-state armed actors often face major difficulties in their quest for recognition. They are typically treated as risky anomalies, if they are not altogether blacklisted as terrorists. At the same time, some of these insurgent movement go quite a long way in attempts to act like a state in order to be gradually seen as such. They arguably engage in state mimicry, by establishing state-like institutions, laws, courts, even (though often minimal) service provision, and some of these groups voluntarily sign up to the principles of humanitarian law.

At the same time, they by an large remain illegal under established juridical framework: they may become de facto sovereign, but not de jure sovereign. But who's law counts in making such adjudications? After, all if we go back in history far enough, every state is based on a violence imposition, which established the law and a closer look at the convolutions of legality under colonial rule casts serious doubt on the moral standards of treating some entities as (legal) states and others as their (illegal) challengers. In short: sovereign states are sovereign because they are?

Additional reading/resources (not mandatory)

Anghie, Anthony (1999 “Finding the Peripheries: Sovereignty and Colonialism in Nineteenth Century International Law”. Harvard International Law Journal 40 (1): 3–71.

Benton, Lauren. 2009. A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fortin, Katharine (2016) ‘The Application of Human Rights Law to Everyday Civilian Life Under Rebel Control,’ Netherlands International Law Review, 63(2): 161–181.

Gangwala, Glen (2015) “The Creation of Governments-in-Waiting: The Arab Uprisings and Legitimacy in the International System.” Geoforum 66: 215–223.

Klem, Bart, and Sidharthan Maunaguru (2017) “Insurgent Rule as Sovereign Mimicry and Mutation: Governance, Kingship and Violence in Civil Wars.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 59, No. 3: 629–656.

Pahuja, Sundhya (2011) Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rodenhäuser, Tilman (2018) Organizing Rebellion: Non-State Armed Groups under International Humanitarian Law, Human Rights Law, and International Criminal Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.