Legal Control of the Private Military Corporation

Legal Control of the Private Military Corporation

Author: B. Sheehy

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2008-12-11

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0230583016

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Private military organizations are a new and important feature of the international landscape. They offer control of potential massive violence to the highest bidder with very limited accountability. This book offers critical insights into both the phenomenon and the challenges of and potential for regulation.


Private Military and Security Companies

Private Military and Security Companies

Author: Erika Calazans

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2016-05-11

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1443893951

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This book’s primary concern is the application of International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law in addressing the business conduct of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) during armed conflicts, as well as state responsibility for human rights violations and current attempts at international regulation. The book discusses four interconnected themes. First, it differentiates private contractors from mercenaries, presenting an historical overview of private violence. Second, it situates PMSCs’ employees under the legal status of civilian or combatant in accordance with the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949. It then investigates the existing law on state responsibility and what sort of responsibility companies and their employees can face. Finally, the book explores current developments on regulation within the industry, on national, regional and international levels. These themes are connected by the argument that, in order to find gaps in the existing laws, it is necessary to establish what they are, what law is applicable and what further developments are needed.


Outsourcing War and Peace

Outsourcing War and Peace

Author: Laura Anne Dickinson

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2011-01-01

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 0300144865

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This timely book describes the services that are now delivered by private contractors and the threat this trend poses to core public values of human rights, democratic accountability, and transparency. --


The Oxford Handbook of the Use of Force in International Law

The Oxford Handbook of the Use of Force in International Law

Author: Marc Weller

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2015-01-15

Total Pages: 1377

ISBN-13: 0191653918

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The prohibition of the use of force in international law is one of the major achievements of international law in the past century. The attempt to outlaw war as a means of national policy and to establish a system of collective security after both World Wars resulted in the creation of the United Nations Charter, which remains a principal point of reference for the law on the use of force to this day. There have, however, been considerable challenges to the law on the prohibition ofThe prohibition of the use of force in international law is one of the major achievements of international law in the past century. The attempt to outlaw war as a means of national policy and to establish a system of collective security after both World Wars resulted in the creation of the United Nations Charter, which remains a principal point of reference for the law on the use of force to this day. There have, however, been considerable challenges to the law on the prohibition of the use of force over the past two decades. This Oxford Handbook is a comprehensive and authoritative study of the modern law on the use of force. Over seventy experts in the field offer a detailed analysis, and to an extent a restatement, of the law in this area. The Handbook reviews the status of the law on the use of force, and assesses what changes, if any, have occurred in consequence to recent developments. It offers cutting-edge and up-to-date scholarship on all major aspects of the prohibition of the use of force. The work is set in context by an extensive introductory section, reviewing the history of the subject, recent challenges, and addressing major conceptual approaches. Its second part addresses collective security, in particular the law and practice of the United Nations organs, and of regional organizations and arrangements. It then considers the substance of the prohibition of the use of force, and of the right to self-defence and associated doctrines. The next section is devoted to armed action undertaken on behalf of peoples and populations. This includes self-determination conflicts, resistance to armed occupation, and forcible humanitarian and pro-democratic action. The possibility of the revival of classical, expansive justifications for the use of force is then addressed. This is matched by a final section considering new security challenges and the emerging law in relation to them. Finally, the key arguments developed in the book are tied together in a substantive conclusion. The Handbook will be essential reading for scholars and students of international law and the use of force, and legal advisers to both government and NGOs.


Privatizing War

Privatizing War

Author: Lindsey Cameron

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-03-07

Total Pages: 757

ISBN-13: 1107328683

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A growing number of states use private military and security companies (PMSCs) for a variety of tasks, which were traditionally fulfilled by soldiers. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the law that applies to PMSCs active in situations of armed conflict, focusing on international humanitarian law. It examines the limits in international law on how states may use private actors, taking the debate beyond the question of whether PMSCs are mercenaries. The authors delve into issues such as how PMSCs are bound by humanitarian law, whether their staff are civilians or combatants, and how the use of force in self-defence relates to direct participation in hostilities, a key issue for an industry that operates by exploiting the right to use force in self-defence. Throughout, the authors identify how existing legal obligations, including under state and individual criminal responsibility should play a role in the regulation of the industry.


Marque and Reprisal

Marque and Reprisal

Author: Kenneth B. Moss

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2019-04-22

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 0700627758

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“Letters of marque” might suggest privateers of the Elizabethan era or the American Revolution. But such conventions are duly covered in the US Constitution, and the private military instruments they sanction are very much at work today in the form of mercenaries and military contractors. A history of such practices up to the present day, Marque and Reprisal by Kenneth B. Moss offers unique insight into the role of private actors in military conflicts and the reason they are increasingly deployed in our day. Along with an overview of mercenaries and privateers, Marque and Reprisal provides a comprehensive history of the “marque and reprisal” clause in the US Constitution, reminding us that it is not as arcane as it seems and arguing that it is not a license for all forms of undeclared war. Within this historical context Moss explains why governments and states have sought control over warfare and actors—and why private actors have reappeared in force in recent conflicts. He also looks ahead to the likelihood that cyberwar will become an important venue for “private warfare.” Moss wonders if international law will be up to the challenges of private military actors in the digital realm. Is international law, in fact, equipped to meet the challenges increasingly presented in our day by such extramilitary activity? A government makes no more serious decision than whether to resort to military force and war; and when doing so, Moss suggests, it should ensure that such actions are accountable, not on the sly, and not decided in the marketplace. Marque and Reprisal should inform future deliberations and decisions on that count.


The Routledge Handbook of Security Studies

The Routledge Handbook of Security Studies

Author: Myriam Dunn Cavelty

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-12-16

Total Pages: 499

ISBN-13: 113523907X

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Pt. 1. Theoretical approaches to security and different 'securities' -- pt. 2. Contemporary security challenges -- pt. 3. Regional security challenges -- pt. 4. Confronting security challenges.


The New Dogs of War

The New Dogs of War

Author: Ward Thomas

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-09-15

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1501758918

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As Ward Thomas details in The New Dogs of War, militias and paramilitary groups wield greater power than national governments in many countries, while in some war zones private contractors perform missions previously reserved for uniformed troops. Most ominously, terrorist organizations with global reach have come to define the security landscape for even the most powerful nations. Across the first decades of the twenty-first century we have witnessed a dramatic rise in the use of military force by these nonstate actors in ways that have impacted the international system, leading Thomas to undertake this valuable assessment of the state of play at this critical moment. To understand the spread of nonstate violence, Thomas focuses on the crucial role played by an epochal transformation in international norms. Since the eighteenth century, the Westphalian model of sovereignty has reserved the legitimate use of force to states. Thomas argues that normative changes in the decades after World War II produced a "crisis of coherence" for formal and informal rules against nonstate violence. In detailed case studies of nonstate militias, transnational terrorist networks, and private military contractors, Thomas explains how forces contesting state prerogatives exploited this crisis, which in turn reshaped international understandings of who could legitimately use force. By considering for the first time all three purveyors of nonstate violence as aspects of the same phenomenon, The New Dogs of War explains this fundamental shift in the norm that for centuries gave states the monopoly on military force.