Use Of Private Security Companies Research Articles

Chinese Private Security Companies and the limit of coercion

ABSTRACTThis article analyses how China has overcome the limit of coercion through the use of Private Security Companies since the end of the Cold War until 2021. For this purpose, the Security Governance approach was applied to understand how the decentralisation and fragmentation of the security monopoly by the state could result in convenient coercive acts against societies. We point two paths of observation: an international path – the protection of the Chinese diaspora and the Belt and Road Initiative facilities; and a national path – the governmental interests that pave the monitoring and controlling mechanisms of Chinese society.

Private Security, Human Rights and COVID-19: Regulatory Challenges at the Margins

The increasing use of private security by States during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the fast outsourcing facilitating that use, raises immediate challenges to the international legal order, and specifically to the protection of human rights, particularly for marginalised groups. It also reinforces existing fundamental questions about future regulation and governance of the private security sector at both the international and national levels. This essay assesses the impacts and consequences of the use of private security companies during the global pandemic by: (1) identifying the challenges for the rule of law due to the use of emergency procurement rules by States to outsource security; (2) highlighting the negative impacts on human rights as a result of using private security during the pandemic, especially for groups marginalised by race, ethnicity, poverty, disability, gender, sexuality or other status; (3) examining the reorientation of services provided by the private security sector towards humanitarian and medically-related activities and the human rights consequences; (4) exposing regulatory weaknesses. It concludes that emergency legislation expediting the use of private security must not become normalized, despite the pandemic, that States and private security companies must pay particular attention to the significant risks of human rights impacts, particularly for marginalized groups, and that the international and national regulatory regimes for private security are of limited effect in current circumstances and require urgent attention.

Security privatisation at sea: Piracy and the commercialisation of vessel protection

In 2011, the growing number of pirate attacks prompted several flag states to authorise the use of armed guards aboard vessels. Despite facing the same threat, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Italy have adopted three distinct approaches to securing their merchant ships, ranging from the exclusive use of private security companies (PSCs) to the employment of military personnel only. This article conducts a congruence testing of the main theoretical explanations for the use of PSCs on land against UK, Dutch and Italian vessel protection policies. By relying on sequencing as a technique for theoretical synthesis, we develop a multicausal explanation of states’ vessel protection arrangements, showing the varying influence of functionalist, ideational, organisational and political drivers of security privatisation at different phases of the policy process.

Foreign mining, law and the privatization of property: a case study from Peru

This article focuses on the convergence of the corporate power of Yanacocha Mine with the Peruvian State's public power, studied in relation to two interrelated and fundamental sites of power: Indigenous land rights and the regulation of the use of force. The analysis presents two international human rights litigation initiatives: the Negritos Case and the GRUFIDES Case, which illustrate the complex relationship between Peru's colonial history, Yanacocha's current status as one of the most profitable goldmines in the world, serious land rights violations, and the emergence of widespread social protest and the escalating use of private security companies by multinational mining companies. The analysis addresses four legal processes flowing from the private–public convergence: (1) the dispossession of Campesino communal land; (2) the production of Campesino consent; (3) the privatization of coercive force; and (4) the absence of effective legal remedies. The conclusion considers the significance of the case study for those who seek to use the law to engage in practices of resistance to the power configuration represented by the private–public convergence.

Private Security Companies (PSCs) as a Piracy Countermeasure

Private Security Companies (PSC) are a part of the Best Management Practice in the shipping industry. The ship owners are using PSCs to protect their vessels against pirates, but protection of the vessels is just a part of the services that PSCs can provide. The services can be divided in four main groups: (1) security intelligence, risk assessment and consulting; (2) security services; (3) crisis response; and (4) intervention. While the use of PSCs may offer some deterrent value, the potential costs of hiring these firms would appear to outweigh the benefits. The argument in this article is that the use of PSCs works for the individual ship owners, but it is not a long term solution of the piracy problem unless they are used in a coordinated way by ship owners and the international society. In this way they can become an added value in the fight against piracy.

Alternative agents for humanitarian intervention

The use of private security companies by national governments is met with widespread skepticism. Less understood is the role these companies can play in international humanitarian interventions in the service of international organizations. I argue here that despite valid concerns about the use of such private entities, we should nonetheless see them as legitimate participants in efforts to secure human rights protection around the globe. In order to assess their legitimacy, we need to ensure, among other things, that they can adhere to ethical standards when serving in humanitarian missions, that they can be held accountable when they fail to uphold the standard of justice enshrined in international law, and that their for-profit status does not have implications detrimental to humanitarian concerns.

Private Security Companies and Civil Wars

Private security companies (PSCs) have experienced explosive growth since 2001, growth that has been matched only by the consequent explosion in academic attention probing their influence. It is not hard to discover that PSCs and their employees constituted the second-largest member of the US-led Coalition of the Willing during the invasion of Iraq in 2003;1 that this represented a 10-fold increase compared with the first Gulf War in 1991;2 that there are between 15,000 and 50,000 contractors currently operating in Iraq, according to various estimates;3 and that these companies suffer, at the very least, from a dearth of effective regulation4 that some go as far as to call a vacuum.5 However, there has been very little analysis of the consequences of the use of such companies in civil wars. PSCs have the potential, because they are non-state actors, privately motivated, and often external to the conflict, to complicate civil wars. Indeed, the use of PSCs by the US (by far the largest employer of contractors, as PSC employees are often called) has been characterised by a notable absence of planning and policy, both military and governmental. The United Kingdom, which is host to a number of major companies, has similarly failed to examine the policy consequences of the private security industry. This article examines how the absence of effective policy about the effects of privatising force has led to a series of unintended consequences that are influencing and will continue to influence the nature of civil wars. The first section begins by briefly outlining the nature of the private security industry and the roles it plays in civil wars. The second section examines how poor planning has led to problems for the US in its interventions into civil wars, focusing particularly on the private security industry in Iraq. The third section addresses how a similar lack of policy has caused the UK difficulties in the past, and could mean the UK will face problems in conflicts in the future.

Overcoming Dilemmas Created by the 21st Century Mercenaries: conceptualising the use of private security companies in Iraq

In the past private security companies have taken responsibility for protecting reconstruction and aid activities during and after conflict. In Mozambique, Angola and Afghanistan such companies have played various roles in providing security for the reconstruction effort and delivery of humanitarian aid. However, the extensive private sector involvement in the reconstruction of Iraq, in addition to expanding aid activities, means that the use of private security companies is at an unprecedented level. Consequently the boundaries between civilian and military activities are becoming blurred, which creates new dangers for humanitarian assistance. Despite the increased number of private security companies in operation, their role is poorly conceptualised, discussed only as part of the overall security response rather than as a vital component of the delivery of aid and of the extensive private sector-led reconstruction programme. To conceptualise the protection of private sector reconstruction and ngo activity, the article examines three interrelated perspectives—the confusion between military intervention and humanitarian aid, the advent of the armed humanitarian and the need to understand the perceptions of the local population. The article provides typologies of local perceptions as a starting point for organisational analysis. It examines the implication of these typologies for reconstruction using Slim's questions: how do we look? What is most visible? Who is looking? The article confirms the link between the use of private security companies for reconstruction and ngo activities and the exacerbation of conflict. Therefore ngos and organisations working in the private sector need to differentiate their efforts from the military campaigns which by doing so limits the violent consequences of negative perceptions.