‚Zone der Nicht-Verantwortlichkeit‘: Der Vertrag über den Waffenhandel und die Lizensierung von Gewalt

Abstract

The ongoing conflict in Yemen is a site of humanitarian catastrophe, unimaginable atrocity, and human suffering. Since the Saudi-led coalition entered the conflict in March 2015, several months after the entry into force of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), the Yemen conflict has been fuelled by ongoing arms supplies by Western states and corporations. The scale and significance of these arms supply relationships has been the subject of unprecedented, concerted efforts by a legal platform of non-governmental organisations and legal advocates to mobilise the ATT in its broader environment of cognate international and domestic laws, to challenge these arms transfers before the domestic courts of arms-supplying states. In the absence of international oversight mechanisms, the ATT casts national authorities, licensing bodies, and domestic courts in a principal governing role in relation to the global arms trade. Drawing on the transnational legal work to contest and resist arms supply relationships conditioning the violence in Yemen, this essay examines the interpretative and paralegal practices of domestic authorities, constituted by and generative of (inter)national arms control law.