Citation: Baker, Deane-Peter and Pattison, James (2012) ‘The Principled Case for Employing Private Military and Security Companies in Interventions for Human Rights Purposes,’ Journal of Applied Philosophy, 29:1, pp. 1-18.
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Abstract: The possibility of using private military and security companies to bolster the capacity to undertake intervention for human rights purposes (humanitarian intervention and peacekeeping) has been increasingly debated. The focus of such discussions has, however, largely been on practical issues and the contingent problems posed by private force. By contrast, this article considers the principled case for privatising humanitarian intervention. It focuses on two central issues. First, does outsourcing humanitarian intervention to private military and security companies pose some fundamental, deeper problems in this context, such as an abdication of a state’s duties? Second, on the other hand, is there a case for preferring these firms to other, state-based agents of humanitarian intervention? For instance, given a state’s duties to their own military personnel, should the use of private military and security contractors be preferred to regular soldiers for humanitarian intervention?
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Baker (2012:1): “As the use of private military and security companies (PMSCs) has become increasingly prevalent in the international system, there have been several calls for them to be used to a greater degree for interventions for human rights purposes, that is, for humanitarian intervention and peacekeeping. Their use, it is argued, could potentially improve the international community’s abilities to discharge the responsibility to protect and, in doing so, help to prevent the mass violation of human rights.”
Baker (2012:1-2): “More generally, those who object to the use of PMSCs, including for humanitarian intervention and peacekeeping, raise the following concerns. First, the use of PMSCs can undermine democratic control over the use of force (and, in this case, humanitarian intervention), since governments can employ PMSCs to circumvent many of the constitutional and parliamentary constraints on the decision to send troops into action. This is because it is much easier to use private force secretively, without public debate beforehand. Second, there is a loss of control over the behaviour of those in the field as lines of command and control become blurred by the introduction of PMSCs. Third, the lack of legal accountability of PMSCs can mean that private contractors can violate principles of jus in bello with impunity. Fourth, the use of PMSCs threatens to loosen the legal and political instruments that govern and regulate warfare. These instruments, such as the UN Charter, largely rely on the use of force by states and state-based institutions. The use of PMSCs, even for humanitarian intervention and peacekeeping, may make it more difficult to sustain effective legal and political instruments to govern warfare, over both states and PMSCs.” [The first point is not applicable to a non-democratic state like Russia. The second depends on how they are deployed, and could be no less true when different state agencies (GRU, FSB) operate in the same arena. The third is theoretically problematic, but Russian military forces have committed crimes against humanity in Chechnya and Syria, and yet not been held to account; the issue is thus more one of the lack of means of compulsion for great power violations in the international system. The fourth is again true on a theoretical level, but such constraints are already loosened by the regularity with which states wage was without formally declaring it]
Baker (2012:4): “One problem with PMSCs is that they sometimes do not possess a humanitarian intention. Their actions may be profit-driven instead and they are ultimately accountable to their shareholders rather than the contracting state.”