Abstract
State choices in Sierra Leone, like in Liberia, suggest that the anti-mercenary norm is relatively less influential. The path of preference formation in Sierra Leone was one of the earliest in Africa; it pre-dates Montreux and is still a source of practice. The chapter examines how ensuing crisis affected continuity and change in PMSC governance during a post-disaster setting by focusing on the Ebola Virus Disease pandemic. The chapter emphasizes on the basis of fieldwork and interviews on how the state retained control over PMSC standards during the implementation of emergency measures.
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- 1.
Earlier versions of parts of this chapter were originally published as Boggero, M., “Private Security and Governance in Weak States: New and Old Cases,” Sudan Studies Association Newsletter 24 (2014), but have been substantially changed, repositioned, or have become part of different lines of argument.
- 2.
Chinese warlords at the beginning of the twentieth century, who first invented the term to describe themselves . Pye 1971.
- 3.
The Legg Report. Cf. Harris 2014. On the significance of the Arms to Africa affairs , cf. Kinsey 2006, pp. 90–93. The Arms to Africa affair and subsequently the UK Green Paper of 2002 were a turning point in the perception of the legal nature of PMSCs. As Kinsey writes, it would have been a simple matter of procedure to outlaw PMSCs but “there occurred a shift in the perceived legality of the activities” of PMSCs.
- 4.
Cockayne writes that “in the summer of 2007, IPI, DCAF and the ICRC drafted detailed discussion papers, totaling over 100 pages, drawing together existing practice—of states, private clients and industry associations (…) the most important sources of practice were: national legislation in the United States, the UK, South Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan, Angola, Sierra Leone” Cockayne 2008.
- 5.
Cf. Christensen Mynster., M. 2015, pp. 29–30. In her interviews, she writes: “‘We are not sending mercenaries to Iraq and Afghanistan, if this is what you think,’ an employee at the Ministry of Labour told me a few weeks after it was announced that Sabre International would be recruiting ‘ex- servicemen’ for security contracting. (…) he stressed that this was a programme launched (…) to tackle the huge youth unemployment problem.”
- 6.
Cf. Christensen Mynster., M. 2015. Relying on her recent fieldwork, Christensen Mynster writes: “‘We are not sending mercenaries to Iraq and Afghanistan, if this is what you think,’ an employee at the Ministry of Labour told me a few weeks after it was announced that Sabre International would be recruiting ‘ex- servicemen’ for security contracting. (…), he stressed that this was a program launched (…) to tackle the huge youth unemployment problem.”
- 7.
What follows is based on P. Cullen in Berube and Cullen 2014, pp. 103–110.
- 8.
Authors’ interviews, September 2015, Freetown.
- 9.
The office was located in town, next to the UN Mission for Ebola Response and the Special Court for Sierra Leone, west of the city of Freetown.
- 10.
Authors’ interviews, September 2015, Freetown.
- 11.
Authors’ interviews, September 2015, Freetown.
- 12.
Authors’ interviews, UN DSS.
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Boggero, M. (2018). Sierra Leone: Continuity and Change. In: The Governance of Private Security . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69593-8_9
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