Legal Aspects of the Privatisation and Commercialisation of Space Activities

MAUREEN WILLIAMS

Report of the 71st Conference of the International Law Association

International Law Association, Londres

Lugar: Londres, Reino Unido; Año: 2005; p. 732 - 772

The scope and title of the present report were discussed and agreed by the Space Law Committee on the basis of a questionnaire circulated to members shortly after the New Delhi Conference. On this basis the terms of reference for our work were approved by the ILA Executive Council in November 2002. In the initial quest, a number of interesting views were received from Committee members representing the different ILA Branches, namely our former Chair, Professor Böckstiegel, and Dr. Mahulena Hoffmann (Germany), Prof. Carl Q. Christol (USA), Professors Gilbert Guillaume and Armel Kerrest (France), Prof. Vladimir Kopal (Czech Republic), Dr. José Monserrat Filho (Brazil), Ass. Prof. Alexis Goh (Australia), Dr. Nandasiri Jasentuliyana (HQ) and Dr. Frans von der Dunk (Netherlands). Within this framework similar consensus was reached on the need to emphasise the legal questions related to remote sensing and national space legislation. The main objective of the Committee was to analyse the state-of-the-art in the present world scenario and reach some common denominators to serve as pillars for our next Report in 2006. In view of the growth of commercial space activities, remote sensing and national space legislation become of major importance today and, in turn, are strongly linked to registration issues, a topic in need of clarification which the Legal Subcommittee (LSC) of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) has now added to its agenda. To this effect, the setting up of a working group is envisaged for 2005, on the occasion of the Legal Subcommittee´s 44th Session. In addition, the questions of space debris (ILA International Instrument adopted at the 66th Conference, Buenos Aires 1994) and dispute settlement (Draft Convention adopted at the 68th ILA Conference, Taipei 1998) continued under permanent review of the Committee in the aftermath of the Conferences of reference. During the 43rd Session of the Legal Subcommittee of Copuos in 2004 the study of the legal issues relating to space debris continued to gain support, inter alia, by the delegations of the Czech Republic, Greece, France and the European Space Agency.