Globalisation has encouraged the emergence of private security and military companies. What are the policy implications of the phenomenon? As armies in many countries are downsizing, are security entrepreneurs a necessary evil? Can they help to prevent conflicts and build sustainable peace? How should they be regulated?

A report from International Alert examines how that hitherto most closely guarded of public services, the defence sector, is following in the privatisation footsteps of energy, telecoms and water. Highlighting the multiple threats to stability associated with the privatisation of security, it urges the international community to do more to regulate this emerging industry.

The new war entrepreneurs have thrived due to the surplus of military personnel caused by defence cutbacks in many Western countries and failures of underfunded demobilisation programmes which have encouraged ex-combatants from countries now at peace to seek mercenary employment in others’ conflicts. War entrepreneurialism echoes the dominant privatisation culture. Just as the manufacturing of arms and defence equipment was denationalised, are we now on the verge of seeing cost-conscious Western armed forces employing private actors in front-line military duties?

Mercenaries have had legal status within international humanitarian law since Article 47 was added to the Geneva Convention in 1977. Although the Organisation of African Unity adopted a Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism in 1985 and the UN banned mercenaries in 1989, the definition of a ‘mercenary’ is vague and states are still allowed to hire foreign soldiers as part of their national forces.

The report notes that:

• Experience in Colombia shows the danger that private companies, despite their protests that they are only engaged in protecting property and personnel, can get involved in training paramilitaries with scant regard for human rights.
• The absence of legal safeguards to prevent private companies from working for non-state armed groups has enabled them to work covertly with insurgents.
• Governments that have employed mercenary companies in recent years include Croatia, Papua New Guinea, Angola, Sierra Leone and Zaire.
• The US use of a private firm as its contribution to the OSCE verification force in Kosovo in 1998 has created a precedent of great concern to European leaders.

The paper argues that only by developing a comprehensive regulatory framework to govern the use of private security groups can the international community lessen the potentially harmful aspects of the privatisation of security. It recommends: 

• stricter enforcement of existing international standards to prevent non-state actors from using mercenaries
• governments in post-conflict states should prioritise the establishment of professional and democratically-accountable security forces
• governments in countries which provide private security companies must prompt public debate about their impact on foreign policy
• UN and other multilateral peacekeepers need to ensure that member states refrain from using private companies to perform military peacekeeping functions
• humanitarian agencies should ask themselves whether their use of private security companies is compatible with impartiality
• UN member states, particularly in Africa, should ratify the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries so that it can come into force. So far, only 19 states have signed up.

Source(s):
‘The privatisation of security and peacebuilding: a framework for action’, International Alert, by Damian Lilly, 2000 Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 14 November 2003

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Contact the contributor: general@international-alert.org

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