International Seminar on Human Rights and new forms of Mercenarism

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - NOVEMBER 9: Private security contractor, Neil Gary, 26, a former US Marine, runs along a sidewalk in Afghanistan drawing stares from locals while providing security for a convoy November 9, 2005 in Kabul, Afghanistan. Gary and his fellow security contractors often wade into traffic yelling at drivers to get out of the way. Gary works for the private military company Crucible providing security for U.S. State Department contractors in Afghanistan. The men who decide to work as a private security contractors often base their decision to do so upon a combination of a feeling of patriotic duty, a desire for action, and the ability to make lots of money. Thousands of private military contractors are working in Afghanistan while some thirty thousand are working in Iraq often with little oversight from the U.S. government. These private soldiers make up the second largest troop force in the "Coalition of the Willing" in Iraq and have reportedly exchanged fire with other security companies, U.S. forces, and Iraqi insurgents. The U.S. endeavor in both Afghanistan and Iraq relies heavily on the services these hired guns provide. (Photo by Matt Moyer/Getty Images)

CEI – International Affairs and NOVACT have organized in Barcelona the Seminar “Human rights and new forms of mercenarism: Violations, limits and opportunities of the international legal system” with the aim of exposing, demonstrating and analysing the causes of the serious impact of the Private Military and Security Industry on human rights.

21st April 2017 / 8:45 – 14h
Palau Macaya (Passeig de Sant Joan, 108, Barcelona)

The first part of the seminar will be focused in understanding how the worldwide phenomenon of privatisation of war and security works and develops. It will go deeply into the analysis of the multiple contemporary contexts where these Private Military and Security Companies (PMSC) operate, and there will be also an explanation of what are its consequences for peoples human and civil rights, and in which ways their activities aggravate and perpetuate situations of conflict and political and social instability.

To define what type of legislation is necessary to fight against the opacity of these companies, the debate will also revolve around the current nonexistence of legal and political limits to the activities of the PMSC industry – a huge global actor due to its magnitude, characteristics and variety of operational contexts -,  a situation that enables PMSC don’t being held accountable for their actions. That is why all the actions plans, as well as the studies that analyse their development and legal status, pursue 3 main objectives: the control of their activities, the transparency of their operating rules and procedures and to end impunity in all the cases in which their actions violate human rights.

This international debate on PMSCs regulation exists already
within the United Nations Working Group on the use of Mercenaries

This seminar aims to be a meeting point to attain a greater collaboration between the academic world, civil society organisations and political representatives in the countries where this industry operates. Members of the United Nations Working Group on the use of Mercenaries will also have a presence at the Seminar, and it will host the launching of the report “To the international regulation of new forms of mercenarism” by the Prof. Dr. Helena Torroja Mateu.

NOVACT will also launch its new project ShockMonitor, a collaborative research tool for monitoring the impacts of Private Military and Security Companies’ activities in human rights at an international level.

Shock Monitor is based on documentation, analysis, compilation of data
and creation of different networks: research, social mobilisation and advocacy 

This Observatory in Private War and Human Rights has been created to control and prevent the consequences of the privatisation of war and security, and to deal with the lack of official studies and statistics.