We kindly invite you to a lecture by Dr Sahba El-Shawa entitled “The Limits of ‘Peaceful Uses’: Against Security Narratives as Drivers of Militarization in Outer Space”, which will take place as part of Tuesday Meetings on Friday, 12 June 2026, at 11.00 am in the library of the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law Ljubljana.
Space security is increasingly invoked to justify policies aimed at protecting space systems through increased militarization. This lecture argues that such frameworks do not reduce threats in outer space or on Earth, but instead reproduce and intensify them by legitimizing militarization under the language of defense, resilience, and stability.
While often presented as neutral or necessary, space infrastructures already play a central role in enabling violence on Earth. This is evident in Gaza, where space-enabled and dual-use systems are embedded in Israeli military operations in the context of the ongoing genocide.
Against this backdrop, the lecture examines the persistent reliance on ambiguous legal concepts, particularly the principle of “peaceful uses” in the Outer Space Treaty, which has failed to prevent the systematic integration of space systems into military doctrines. Drawing on the Space and the Military-Industrial Complex Database developed by the Palestine Space Institute (PSI), it documents and analyzes the involvement of space sector actors in supplying infrastructures for surveillance, targeting, and operational coordination. It argues that dual-use functions as a structural mechanism that obscures harm, diffuses responsibility, and shields both state and corporate actors from accountability, a dynamic which PSI conceptualizes as spacewashing. More broadly, this dynamic highlights how security narratives legitimize militarization across political systems, revealing common patterns of diminished accountability, military-industrial influence, and the normalization of violence that transcend distinctions between so-called liberal and illiberal states.
Ultimately, the lecture advances a clear normative position in favor of demilitarization, arguing that a genuinely peaceful and stable future on Earth and in space cannot be achieved through the management of military competition, but only through its active dismantling.
