Offers a new understanding of the relationships between litigation strategies, growing private funding and European human rights justice.

Human Rights or Global Capitalism examines the application of neoliberal policies from a human rights perspective and asks whether states, by outsourcing to the private sector many services with a direct impact on human rights, abdicate their responsibilities to uphold human rights and violate international law.

"Result of a joint research project ... under the auspices of the Center for Human Rights (University of Maastricht, the Netherlands) and the Institute of Human Rights Pedro Arrupe (University of Deusto, Basque Country, Spain).--P. v

The conduct of armed conflict is increasingly being outsourced to private military and security companies, whose legal position remains unclear. This book identifies and analyses the human rights and humanitarian law framework applicable to these companies, examining how they can be held to account and how victims can obtain remedies.

With the decline of public funding and new strategies pursued by interest groups, foreign private foundations and donors have become growing contributors to the European human rights justice system. These groups have created their own litigation teams, have increasingly funded NGOs litigating the European Courts, and have contributed to the content and supervision of the European judgements, which all have direct effects on the growth and procedure of human rights. European Human Rights Justice and Privatisation analyses the impacts of this private influence and the resultant effects on international relations between states, including the orientation of European jurisprudence towards Eastern countries and the promotion of private and neo-liberal interests. This book looks at the direct and indirect threat of this private influence on the independency of the European justice and on the protection of human rights in Europe.

In Eastern Europe privatization is now a mass phenomenon. The authors propose a model of it by means of an illustration from the example of Poland, which envisages the free provision of shares in formerly public undertakings to employees and consumers, and the provision of corporate finance from foreign intermediaries. One danger that emerges is that of bureaucratization. On the broader canvas, mass privatization implies the reform of the whole system, the creation of a suitable economic infrastructure for a market economy and the institutions of corporate governance. The authors point out the need for a delicate balance between evolution - which may be too slow - and design - which brings the risk of more government involvement than it is able to manage. A chapter originating as a European Bank working paper explores the banking implications of setting up a totally new financial sector with interlocking classes of assets. The economic effects merge into politics as the role of the state is investigated. Teachers and graduate students of public/private sector economies, East European affairs; advisers to bankers or commercial companies with Eastern European interests.

This book explores the human rights consequences of the new mercenarism, as channeled through so-called private military and security companies (PMSCs), and offers an overview of the evolution and status quo of both non-legal (soft law and self-regulation) and legal initiatives seeking to limit them. It addresses various topics, including the impact of the presence of non-state actors on human security using the cases of Afghanistan and Syria; research on PMSCs’ impact on human rights in specific cases; the insufficiency and ineffectiveness of existing direct and indirect legal prohibitions on the use of mercenaries; various aspects of international human rights law and international humanitarian law related to the conduct of PMSCs; soft-law and self-regulation mechanisms; and the international minimum standard in general international law regarding the privatization, export, import, and contracting of PMSCs.