Private Military And Security Companies: Search For International Legal And National Laws

Abstract

Nowadays Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) operate in more than 110 countries. The total number of companies is equal to several hundred with a total number of employees of more than 5 million people. The annual volume of services provided by PMSCs is about 350 billion US dollars (it is growing annually. In this regard, in the absence of an “obvious legal regulation” of such activities, the current situation negatively affects existing conventional international law in general and, in particular, international humanitarian law, and human rights law. Thus, the uncertainty of the clear legal status of MPSCs and its employees leads to undermining the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, in particular those that regulate the rules of warfare (problems of the status of combatant/non-combatant, proportional application of force, responsibility for complying with IHL) and protection of armed conflict victims. The increasing scale of human rights violations in the conditions of both an obvious armed conflict and local armed clashes, according to a number of experts, directly depend on the “unregulated” increase in the number of PMSCs. Another problem relates to the uncertainty in classical instruments or regulations that makes researchers think that PMSC personnel should be classified as mercenaries whose status and ability to hold accountable are problematic for practical application. According to the caustic remark stated in G. Best’s work “a mercenary who cannot refute his belonging to this profession in court is worthy of being shot on the spot together with his lawyer!”.