Abstract:
Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) usually provide specialized expertise or services of
a military or police nature, particularly high-tech intelligence, military training and support as well as
surveillance and protection to strategic installations, high-ranking officials and economic plants of
special importance. They are either hired by governments to supplement regular military forces or
employed by private corporations and firms. PMSCs’ activity can take place both in peacetime
(usually providing police and security services) and in time of war, frequently involving recourse to
armed force through the performance of typical conflict operations. It is thus evident how PMSCs
operations might affect the enjoyment of most human rights, the effectiveness of which is particularly
jeopardized in the course of armed conflicts or other situations of emergency, which represent the
typical contexts in which PMSCs operate. All human rights that are most in danger of being affected
by PMSCs are contemplated and protected by the relevant international law instruments. This general
report provides an overview of these instruments and tries to ascertain how relative obligations and
remedial processes can have an impact on the regulation of PMSCs and on their accountability for
human rights breaches. It examines universal instruments and the regional instruments that are in force
in Latin America, Africa and Asia, as well as the practice of the monitoring bodies established by such
instruments, with special attention on states’ positive obligations to make all reasonable efforts to
ensure that private actors, including PMSCs, do not cause human rights violations.
