Our previous work on the field showed an important deficit of information and documentation about how PMSC activities impact on the human rights of civilian population. This can be attributed to several factors, such as difficulty differentiating contractors from other armed actors on the ground, lack of monitoring mechanisms for PMSCs in territorial States, issues of confidentiality or national security and the absence of official statistics by national and international agents.

Shock Monitor aims to fulfil this deficit by documenting human rights incidents involving PMSCs and their personnel and following-up legal processes related to this incidents. It also analyses the development of PMSC industry, the contexts where they operate, the clients that hire their services and the type of activities they develop.