Space-based systems are increasingly important for humankind, both for daily civilian uses and for military applications. This increased relevance makes space systems an attractive target for potential adversaries and, in the light of a permissively open-ended legal framework, many States have developed counterspace capabilities. Is it too late to prevent an arms race in space? What can the international community do to ensure the peaceful use of space, for the benefit of all humankind?

Join the Freeman Air and Space Institute (FASI) for a webinar with Almudena Azcárate Ortega, Space Security Researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR). She has published widely and briefed UN Member States on space security law and policy, and has led UNIDIR’s participation in the UN Open-Ended Working Group on Reducing Space Threats Through Norms, Rules and Principles of Responsible Behaviour, established pursuant to UN General Assembly resolution 76/231. Her most recent report, Outer Space and Use of Force, provides a legal primer on how the prohibition of the use of force applies to outer space. Ms Azcárate has a LLM in National Security Law from Georgetown University, where she is currently pursuing her doctorate.

This webinar will explore the rapidly increasing importance of space as a diplomatic and military domain. As space systems have become crucial components in modern warfighting, the proliferation of counterspace capabilities targeting those systems raises the risk of a new arms race in space.

More recently, the idea of space-based missile interceptors and other forms of space weapons have been resurrected. In an environment where there are now more threats to space security than ever before, this topic has become particularly important in multilateral debates.

Ms. Azcárate will explain how the international community is now embarking on a new process: an Open-ended Working Group on PAROS in all its aspects, where States and other stakeholders  will discuss challenges to space security and how to mitigate them through the implementation of measures such as legally binding agreements and non-legally binding norms, rules and principles.

Meet the panel:

Almudena Azcárate Ortega
Almudena Azcárate Ortega is the lead Space Security Researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).

She has published widely and briefed UN Member States on the topics of space security law and policy and has presented her research in multiple fora. She has led UNIDIR’s participation in the UN Open-Ended Working Group on Reducing Space Threats Through Norms, Rules and Principles of Responsible Behaviour, established pursuant to UN General Assembly resolution 76/231.

Almudena is also a Fellow with the Center on National Security at Georgetown University, where she is currently working on her doctoral dissertation on space security law. She holds an LL.M. in National Security Law from the same institution, where she was the recipient of Georgetown’s Thomas Bradbury Chetwood, S.J. Prize for the most distinguished academic performance in the programme. She received her LL.B. from the University of Navarra, Spain.

Dr Jeni Mitchell
Dr Jeni Mitchell is a lecturer in the Department of War Studies specialising in future war studies, space studies and the evolution of rebellion. She is founder and co-director of the Future Threats Lab, a research group within the Centre for Science & Security Studies that takes a human-centric approach to the most dire threats facing humanity and its habitats.She is also an associate of the Freeman Air and Space Institute and the King’s Wargaming Network.

Sign up to attend this event: REGISTER NOW