Abstract
Private Military Companies (PMCs) are often refered to as employers of ‘modern mercenaries’ or ‘mercenary firms’. Being labeled as ‘mercenary’ can have grave consequences for the individuals, e.g., whether their participation in combat actions is lawful and whether they can claim prisoner of war status. This essay aims at answering the question whether the firms or their employees are mercenaries in terms of International Law. In order to answer these question the first part of the essay states the different definitions of mercenaries used in International Law. In part two, these definitions are applied to actually existing PMCs and their employees in the form of short case studies. It will be shown that the present legal definitions hardly provide a proper tool for labeling PMCs and their employees mercenaries. The last part of the essay intends to present solutions to this problem.
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References
Report of Committee III, Fourth Session, para. 26, CDDH/407/Rev. 1; XV, 445; published in Levie 1980:42–44.
Report of Committee III, Third Session, para. 101, CDDH/236/Rev.i; XV, 373; published in Levie 1980: 28–31.
Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Drafting of an International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries, UN Doc. A/44/43, Supplement No. 43, 2 May 1989:4.
EO recruited its personnel from former South African soldiers in particular from the Special Forces (Howe 1998:311).
Report of Committee III, Third Session, para. 99, CDDH/236/Rev.l; XV, 373; published in Levie 1980:28–31.
Service Provision Agreement between Papua New Guinea and Sandline; published in Singer 2003a: 245–252.
Blackwater employees are said to have been paid up to 2,000 USD a day (Isenberg 2004: 25f); and even personnel with a low qualification may earn up to 600 USD a day, in comparison, the salary of an average US soldier is between 2,000 and 3,000 USD a month (Luyken 2004b: 11).
In September 2004, 62 of them have been found not guilty of the attempt to overthrow the government. But they were sentenced to prison, because of the breach against the aviation and immigration laws. After 12 months in prison they were expelled to South-Africa (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17 May 2005).
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© 2007 VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | GWV Fachverlage GmbH, Wiesbaden
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Drews, II. (2007). Private Military Companies: The New Mercenaries? — An International Law Analysis. In: Jäger, T., Kümmel, G. (eds) Private Military and Security Companies. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-90313-2_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-90313-2_21
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