Proceedings of the Workshop - United Nations Office for Outer ...

148 THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS IN PRIVATIZATIONAND COMMERCIAL USE OF OUTER SPACE"North-South" redistribution confrontation, where thenot very successful argument went that the highlyindustrialised countries should not be allowed tomonopolise space communications and that developingcountries should have reserved orbit slots. But this wasa different debate than the one I seek to stimulate here onprioritisation, since my challenge is to the "valueneutrality"of the first come, first served principle. Mychallenge is to the principle that a satellite dedicated tobingo is treated just the same as a satellite dedicated tometeorology.I believe that the international community has nochoice, but to define priority rules, when space, or agiven part of space, like the geo-stationary orbit,becomes scarce.In domestic legal systems the state always makessure that resources are made available for its publicservice functions, even if that resource is scarce.Examples are expropriation laws, even domesticfrequency management.In space we must do the same. We must not overdoit and drift towards censorship or naked power-politics,but we need to define rules and mechanisms to be ableto make sensible, objective trade-offs and choices, firstand foremost between public service functions and otheruses.This is difficult, raises fundamental questions onhow we perceive space, and it is urgent.This is the gauntlet I throw you.Commentary PaperUnidroit’s project for the creation of anew regimen governing the taking ofsecurity in high-value mobile assets: awindow of opportunity in the context ofthe privatisation and commercialisationof spaceMartin StanfordPrincipal Research OfficerUnidroitI should first like to thank the organisers of theWorkshop for giving me this opportunity to inform youof a project underway within U n id r o it which is ofdirect relevance to the issue you have before you thismorning, namely the privatisation andcommercialisation of Outer Space. This project, onwhich we have now been working actively for six years,aims to create a new international regimen to govern thetaking of security in certain categories of high-valueequipment. Among the categories of equipment coveredis space property.The starting points for this initiative areappropriately not only legal but also economic. Legal,in the sense that the application of the lex rei sitae ruledoes not particularly lend itself to the resolution oftransborder disputes concerning the validity,enforceability and priority ranking of security rights incategories of equipment like aircraft that will beregularly moving from one State to another or likespace property that will in the ordinary course ofbusiness be located beyond the jurisdiction of anyState.Economic, in the sense that the opportunities forasset-based financing of such high-value mobileequipment have to date been extremely limited becauseof the difficulties lenders face in securing and collectingon such loans. To take the specific example of spaceproperty, those private lenders contemplating lending onthe security of a satellite are clearly going to want firstto find out whether other lenders may already also have