Research Article
Redefining Fiduciary Oversight in the Digital Age:
Board-Level Liability for Intangible Asset Vulnerabilities and Intellectual Property Loss
Issue:
Volume 9, Issue 4, December 2026
Pages:
442-452
Received:
16 September 2026
Accepted:
29 September 2026
Published:
20 October 2026
DOI:
10.11648/j.ijls.20260904.11
Downloads:
Views:
Abstract: The concept of fiduciary duty has long been framed around safeguarding a company's assets and finances. Corporate governance historically focused on safeguarding tangible property and financial assets. Today, the overwhelming majority of the market capitalisation of the world's largest public companies rests on their balance sheet, and the risks to enterprise value are now far more numerous, from catastrophic loss of intangible assets caused by trade secret cyber-thefts, uncontrolled deployment of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and unmonitored open-source code integration than the risks that the Caremark Doctrine was designed to protect against. Originating in Delaware jurisprudence and mirrored in mechanisms under the UK Companies Act 2006, the doctrine of board-level oversight liability has evolved to hold directors strictly accountable for systematic risk management. Today, passively delegating intangible asset risks to IT or legal departments without board-level escalation protocols fails to satisfy good-faith oversight standards. Expanding on recent legal decisions that extend oversight duties to corporate officers, this paper examines global governance failures in the digital age. It proposes a proactive framework that incorporates amended board charters, explicit reporting channels, and specialised insurance reviews to protect intangible assets across international jurisdictions.
Abstract: The concept of fiduciary duty has long been framed around safeguarding a company's assets and finances. Corporate governance historically focused on safeguarding tangible property and financial assets. Today, the overwhelming majority of the market capitalisation of the world's largest public companies rests on their balance sheet, and the risks to...
Show More
Research Article
Growing Up in the Crossfire: Children, Youth and the Human Cost of Armed Conflict in Africa — Lessons from Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis
Nelson Agbor*
,
Abraham Eiluorior
Issue:
Volume 9, Issue 4, December 2026
Pages:
453-465
Received:
22 September 2026
Accepted:
30 September 2026
Published:
20 October 2026
DOI:
10.11648/j.ijls.20260904.12
Downloads:
Views:
Abstract: Armed conflicts across Africa have consequences for children and young people that extend far beyond immediate death, injury and displacement. They disrupt education, fracture family and community structures, expose children to recruitment, abduction, sexual and gender-based violence, economic exploitation and psychological trauma, and diminish their prospects for social and economic development. This article examines these consequences through the lens of Cameroon’s protracted Anglophone crisis, which evolved from peaceful protests in 2016 into an armed confrontation between state security forces and armed separatist groups in the North-West and South-West regions. Adopting a doctrinal legal methodology complemented by socio-legal and contextual analysis, the article evaluates the protection afforded to conflict-affected children under international humanitarian law, international human rights law, international criminal law and the African regional human rights system. Attention is given to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, its Optional Protocol on children in armed conflict, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocol II, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The article argues that the Anglophone crisis exposes a significant protection gap between the extensive normative architecture governing children in armed conflict and its implementation in protracted, fragmented non-international armed conflicts. It introduces the concept of cumulative conflict harm to explain how mutually reinforcing violations progressively erode childhood, agency and future opportunity. It concludes that protecting children requires moving beyond emergency humanitarianism towards accountability, continuity of education, psychosocial recovery, child-sensitive peacebuilding and long-term institutional reconstruction.
Abstract: Armed conflicts across Africa have consequences for children and young people that extend far beyond immediate death, injury and displacement. They disrupt education, fracture family and community structures, expose children to recruitment, abduction, sexual and gender-based violence, economic exploitation and psychological trauma, and diminish the...
Show More
