There is increased public attention directed to the topic of weapons trade and this is a positive development because enhanced scrutiny holds a promise of bringing more accountability to the field that has long been obscure. This article reviews the possibility of criminal prosecutions of corporate officials for supplying weapons to Gaza, Yemen and Ukraine at the International Criminal Court (ICC) or a similar forum. The Nuremberg Trials planted seeds for such an endeavour by holding several industrialists criminally liable. Yet, modern international criminal law has so far largely stayed away from defining the scope of individual criminal responsibility for corporate officials. The case studies in this paper reveal that the moment is not ripe for commencing actual investigations at the ICC. Nonetheless, a future consensus is slowly building through (often failed) attempts to use legal or policy avenues to define the standards of conduct in the weapons trade.

It seems futile to look for order in the tangle of norms that abound in the global extractive sector, even more so to look for the teleological principle that would give it meaning. In this tangle, normative regimes interact with each other—in a largely contingent manner—as elements of an ecosystem. We argue that inasmuch as order emerges in the global extractive normative ecosystem, it is a function of the success of norm entrepreneurs such as Export and Development Canada (EDC), Canada’s export credit agency, a financial institution adhering to the Equator Principles. Norms entrepreneurs like EDC perform various normative bricolages claiming to deliver different goods such as free, prior and informed consent (FPIC). We analyse how EDC tinkers with different normative instruments, including the International Finance Corporation’s Standard 7 regarding Indigenous Peoples, to deliver ‘FPIC compliance’ in jurisdictions that are deemed ‘deficient’. We argue that the political ontologies promoted by EDC’s notion of FPIC are better understood within the logic of leverage that underlies EDC’s Environmental and Social Risk Management Policy. These ontologies directly contradict notions of FPIC as expressions of Indigenous self-determination. In our view, offering such normative solutions as a palliative for ‘weak’ jurisdictions—a kind of ‘do-it-yourself (DIY) FPIC regime’ implemented by extractive companies—is thus deeply problematic. We conclude that the appraisal of such normative solutions as put forward by these norm entrepreneurs should look beyond the vocabulary these bricolages mobilise to also consider the political grammar that they induce in territories subject to extraction.

War is a lucrative business for the military industry, particularly in contexts of mass and structural violence, extensive violations of international law and genocide. For economically advanced states, the profits generated by military businesses are often seen as beneficial under the dynamics of the military-industrial complex. Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which has caused untold suffering that has ‘scarred the consciousness of humanity’, aptly illustrates this dynamic.

In such a context, states and corporations arguably have a duty under international law not to contribute to or benefit from the war economy of the state committing such violations. In practice, however, adhering to these obligations conflicts with the lucrative economic and geopolitical opportunities that this war economy provides. This essay reflects on the argumentative techniques used by states and corporations to justify continued military support for Israel, despite its clear contradiction with their international legal obligations.

In the Lafarge decision of 7 September 2021, the French Cour de cassation resolved a long-standing unclarity about the interpretation of French criminal law on complicity in the context of multinational corporations’ involvement in international crimes. The court found that complicity in crimes against humanity can be characterized as soon as a business actor is aware that its actions can facilitate the criminal activities of the main perpetrator, without sharing their specific intent to commit the crime. With this ruling, France’s highest criminal court asserted that the transfer of money from multinational cement company Lafarge to the Islamic State (ISIS) to maintain its industrial activity in northern Syria could trigger its liability for complicity in crimes against humanity. This article summarizes this case from a French and international criminal law perspective, focusing on the charge of complicity in crimes against humanity, and assessing the potential implications of this jurisprudence to the arms industry.

In 2018, human rights organizations filed a criminal complaint in Italy against the directors of the Italian armaments export licensing authority (UAMA) and the CEO of the arms manufacturer RWM Italia, following the discovery of bomb remnants on the site of an airstrike in Yemen that killed six civilians. The criminal complaint was dismissed in March 2023, despite the judge ruling that UAMA’s directors had violated the Arms Trade Treaty. In July 2023, the victims filed an application to the European Court of Human Rights against Italy, alleging a violation of the right to life. Drawing on an analysis of the criminal investigation files, this piece assesses the failures of the Italian state and RWM Italia to comply with their international human rights obligations regarding arms transfers. It considers the potential for improving accountability within the arms trade via domestic and European courts.