How can Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) be regulated? What is the best way to enforce international standards? This policy report from the International Peace Institute argues that domestic regulation is not enough, because the industry is increasingly global. What is needed is a roadmap toward effective international regulation. There are now adequate standards in place to develop a global framework to guide implementation and enforcement. By assessing the options available for implementing and enforcing existing standards, the paper identifies five blueprints for the development of a global framework.
In late 2008, seventeen states, including America, Britain, China, Iraq and Afghanistan, endorsed the Montreux Document on Pertinent International Legal Obligations and Good Practices for States Related to Operations of Private Military and Security Companies During Armed Conflict. This provides important guidance to states in regulating PMSCs. But there is a need to do more, to provide increased guidance to industry and ensure that standards are enforced.
The International Peace Institute has reviewed thirty standards implementation frameworks and enforcement frameworks in a range of global industries, including the financial, extractive, textile, chemical, toy, toxic-waste disposal, sporting and veterinary sectors, to identify how such a framework might be constructed for the global security industry (GSI). There are five different types of frameworks that could be applied to the GSI. These frameworks all go beyond reliance on market forces and unilateral national regulation, providing mechanisms that should assist states in regulating the GSI. The aim is not to compete with effective national regulation – which is essential – but to facilitate and supplement it.
There are four design principles that could shape effective standards implementation and enforcement in this industry. Any effective global framework should:
- assist states to discharge their legal duty to protect human rights;
- involve all relevant GSI stakeholders, including states;
- use “smart incentives” to encourage stakeholder involvement and influence their conduct; and
- improve PMSCs’ accountability to clients, the communities they operate in, and other stakeholders.
On the basis of these design principles, it is possible to outline blueprints for five different frameworks that might be developed immediately for the GSI, on the basis of existing standards:
- A global watchdog.
- An accreditation regime
- An arbitral tribunal
- A harmonisation scheme
- A global security industry club.
Each of these blueprints would add value to existing state, industry, and civil society regulatory efforts. It may be necessary to combine different blueprints to construct one overall effective framework. In order to realise such a comprehensive global framework for the GSI on the basis of these blueprints:
- States should work with their civil society and industry partners to convene a series of consultations for each stakeholder group, and specific client segments, to consider what kind of frameworks might be feasible.
- These consultations should each produce a simple statement of what the respective stakeholder group considers feasible and what scope any framework should have – what it should actually seek to regulate.
- These statements will help to clarify whether subsequent efforts should be channeled toward one shared framework, or toward separate components, fashioned by different groups of stakeholders, which might at a later date converge or become interlocking.
- The discussions will also establish which stakeholders should be at the table in the development of such a framework or its components.
