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Regulating Business in Illegal Occupations: The Duty of Non-Assistance Revisited

Regulating Business in Illegal Occupations: The Duty of Non-Assistance Revisited

Author: Sarah El Amouri
Publisher: Larcier Intersentia Publishers
ISBN: 9781839705847
Published In: October 2025
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: Belgium ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

HKD 2,207.80

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Contents

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Private businesses may play a significant role in consolidating illegal occupations by operating in illegally occupied territories. However, as it stands today, international law offers few options for holding private corporate actors legally accountable for their harmful activities in illegally occupied territories. This creates a legal vacuum in the protection of the local population under illegal occupation and allows businesses to benefit from normalised breaches of peremptory international law.

Various branches of international law, including human rights law, IHL, international environmental law and the law of the sea, are exploring the possibility of imposing positive due diligence obligations on home states to regulate transnational conduct of their corporate nationals. This book will examine whether the insights gained on due diligence to regulate transnational business conduct in the aforementioned areas of international law can be transposed mutatis mutandis to the context of the customary duty of non-assistance, due to their significant similarities with the book’s central research issue.

By introducing a novel, positive reading of the duty of non-assistance – which would not only oblige home states not to render aid or assistance to situations breaching norms of jus cogens, but also to take all necessary measures to ensure that their corporate nationals do not contribute to the maintaining of illegal occupations – this book aims to offer an additional, innovative legal avenue to tackle potentially harmful business conduct in illegally occupied territories and provide concrete guidance on how policymakers, legal practitioners, and businesses should cope with the obligation’s implications on the ground.

General Introduction

PART 1. PRIVATE BUSINESS ACTIVITIES RENDERING AID OR ASSISTANCE TO THE MAINTAINING OF ILLEGAL OCCUPATIONS: A NEED TO ADDRESS CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY CHALLENGES

Chapter 1. Illegal Occupation as a Textbook Example of a Situation Created in Serious Breach of jus cogens, Triggering the Aggravated Responsibility Regime

Chapter 2. Identification of Potentially Harmful Private Business Activities in or Pertaining to Illegally Occupied Territories

Chapter 3. Competent Actors to Regulate Potentially Harmful Business Activities in or Pertaining to Illegally Occupied Territories

Chapter 4. From Discretion to Obligation: Regulating (Transnational) Business Conduct through Obligations Imposed on Home States

PART 2. TOWARDS MANDATORY HOME STATE REGULATION OF POTENTIALLY HARMFUL BUSINESS ACTIVITIES IN OR PERTAINING TO ILLEGALLY OCCUPIED TERRITORIES, BASED ON THE DUTY OF NON-ASSISTANCE

Chapter 5. The Duty of Non-Assistance as a Legal Basis for Mandatory Home State Regulation

Chapter 6. Legal Techniques to Attach a Positive Component to the Duty of Non-Assistance

Chapter 7. Due Diligence as a Technique to Regulate Potentially Harmful Transnational Conduct of Private (Corporate) Actors

PART 3. OPERATIONALISATION OF THE IDENTIFIED POSITIVE DUE DILIGENCE COMPONENT ATTACHED TO THE DUTY OF NON-ASSISTANCE

Chapter 8. Operationalisation of the Duty of Non-Assistance’s Positive Due Diligence Component in the Context of Business Activities in Illegal Occupations

General Conclusion

Bibliography