What should be subjected to international legal regulation is not PMSC as such, but the functions they can perform
Over the last decades, the market of private military and security companies has grown dramatically: PMSC personnel take direct part in armed conflicts, provide security services in other situations related ...
RIAC–RUSI Report
A report based on findings from the latest round of the UK–Russia Track 1.5 (non-governmental) bilateral security dialogue, which RUSI held in collaboration with the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC).
Previous iterations of the dialogue have covered a range of geopolitical issues such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, organised crime, terrorism, and the Middle East. This year, the workshops focused on the challenging issues of the economic opportunities...
... RIAC partner in the project is the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the oldest British non-governmental organization with headquarters in London. The seminar was devoted to the analysis of the activity of private military and security companies (PMSCs), including issues of legitimization and regulation of their activity.
Despite the differences in approaches to studying the activity of private military and security companies in Russia and the UK, the seminar participants agreed that the role ...
... contractual work on the one hand and that of mercenaries on the other. Over the past decade, the phenomenon of mercenarism has become virtually inseparable in various international circles from the phenomenon of private military and security companies (PMSCs). There is often a great deal of confusion when people working under contract for private military and security organizations are not distinguished from true mercenaries, which are internationally outlawed. Mercenarism per se is not a new phenomenon....
... legitimately targeted?
Private military and security companies: Mercenaries in suits and khakis?
A basic starting point of the debate over the privatization of military force has been the question of whether private military and security companies (PMSCs) and their personnel should be classified as mercenaries. The proponents of PMSCs argue that, on the basis of existing international law, these companies and their personnel cannot be legally equated to mercenaries, given their corporate structure,...
... with the ‘War on Terror’. Apart from the general trend of the downsizing of government apparatuses, the budget cuts, and the subsequent outsourcing of a wide range of state functions, the growth of private military and security companies (PMSCs) was fueled by an emerging international context characterized by a combination of systemic, geopolitical and ideological changes. A major contributing factor was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the bipolar international system, due to which ...