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70 J. Afr. L. 1 (2026)

handle is hein.journals/jaflaw70 and id is 1 raw text is: Journal ofAfrican Law (2026), 70, 1-18 doi:10.1017/S002185532510079X RSARC ATIL EA Shannon Joy Bosch'* and Matthew Kimble,** 'School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia and 2School of Law, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa Corresponding author: Shannon Joy Bosch; Email: s.bosch@ecu.edu.au (Accepted 3 April 2025; first published online 6 October 2025) Abstract The outsourcing of traditionally military functions in Africa to private military companies (PMCs) such as the Wagner Group and the Africa Corps has been accompanied byviolationsolfinternational humanitarian law and international human rights law. According to the International Law Commission's Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, state responsibility for these violations can be imputed to the states that employ PMCs to function as their agents, to exercise government authority or to act in the vacuum lelt by oliicial authorities. States that do not intervene to prevent these abuses fail their obligations of due diligence through persistent non-action and should not be excused from demanding accountability by immunity agreements between the host and hiring states. We explore the possibility of the communitarian invocation of state responsibility by third-party states, on behalfofvictims, in order to end impunity, drive accountability and secure effective redress for victims. Keywords: Africa Corps; Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts; international humanitarian law; international human rights law; PMC Wagner Group Over the past decade it has become increasingly commonplace to find camo-clad Eastern European nationals deployed as private military contractors in Africa. Human Rights Watch stated in 2022 that United Nations experts and special rapporteurs all report significant and proliferating numbers of members of the Russia-backed private military company (PMC) the Wagner Group being oper- ational in central Africa.' The Office of the High Commission for Human Rights has also sounded * BA (Hons), LLB (UNP, South Africa), LLM (Cambridge, UK), PhD (UKZN, South Africa). Associate Professor and Co-Chair of the Socio-Legal Research Cluster, School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia. ** LLB, LLM (UKZN, South Africa). Lecturer, School of Law, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa. 1 Human Rights Watch (HRW) Central African Republic: HRW denounces alleged abuses of Russian mercenary group (3 May 2022), available at: <https://ww.hrw.org/news/2022/05/03/central-african-republic-abuses-russia- linked-forces> (last accessed 25 September 2024). © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of SOAS University of London. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.