Abstract
While some of the UN member states refrain from providing peacekeepers due to security reasons, the UN frequently turns to the private security market for support. In turn, private military and security companies (PMSCs) take on risky missions and fill in the procurement gaps. It is common practice to criticize PMSCs for not having a clear international legal status, operating in the “grey” area of the law and not being accountable for their actions. Furthermore, the UN often equates PMSCs to mercenaries of the past and calls for strict regulation and surveillance of their activities. This practice has remained unchanged since the 1992 reforms, and the UN has done nothing to reduce the involvement of PMSCs in peacekeeping missions. On the contrary, it has, under pressure from lobbyists for the private security industry, actually increased security expenditures for PMSCs by unprecedented amounts. The UN’s position as a unique universal intergovernmental organization exempts it from a great deal of transparency, accountability and reform. While the private security industry includes various PMSCs that compete for contracts in conflict zones and post-conflict areas, the UN does not have any kind of competitor in peacekeeping procedures. The UN criticizes PMSCs for their blatant human rights violations and disregard of international law, yet continues to contract them for its peacekeeping missions. This paper examines the problem of involving PMSCs in UN peacekeeping operations. It aims to answer the following main questions: How do PMSCs, as partners of the UN in the peacekeeping process, contribute to the protection of human rights, which is one of the organization’s basic declared principles? Can PMSCs become a recognized instrument within the UN system? Would UN peacekeeping eff orts improve as a result of hiring PMSCs?
Highlights
While some of the UN member states refrain from providing peacekeepers due to security reasons, the UN frequently turns to the private security market for support
This paper examines the problem of involving private military and security companies (PMSCs) in UN peacekeeping operations
In its theoretical part this paper studies the involvement of PMSCs in peacekeeping operations through the several concepts
Summary
The tendency to outsource state military and security functions to PMSCs does apply to conflict- and war-torn regions, and takes place during peacekeeping missions and humanitarian operations. In cases where foreign forces did interfere in conflicts, international organizations themselves began to get PMSCs involved in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations.[3] According to the UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries as a Means of Violating Human Rights and Impeding the Exercise of the Right of Peoples to Self-Determination, as of May 2014, approximately 30 private military and security companies were involved in the organization’s missions. The Liberian forces had completed training with DynCorp and Pacific Architects & Engineers (PAE) – both PMSCs hired by the US under the initiative Another giant in the PMSC sector, G4S, is engaged in “minefield mapping and battlefieldordnance disposal” under the auspices of the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan.[1] After several years working under a UN contract as part of the partnership program “the combined efforts of G4S and other demining groups [...] have cleared merely 835 square miles of suspect land, with large tracts remaining to be done.”[2] It operates there alone. Starr’s time as head of the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service.[8]
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