UN report describes new mercenary activity

[babylonsister]

UN report describes new mercenary activity
The Associated Press
Published: October 17, 2007


GENEVA: Private contractors like those implicated in the shootings of civilians in Iraq are part of a global trend of hiring recruits from one country to perform military jobs in another, in what a UN expert called a growing new form of mercenary activity.

The independent human rights experts who wrote a UN report obtained by The Associated Press consider the slaying of 17 civilians in Baghdad by security guards working for Blackwater USA last month as underscoring the risk of using such contractors in a country where they have immunity, the chairman of the UN group said.

The report is to be presented to the UN General Assembly next month.

The UN Security Council and General Assembly have opposed the use of mercenaries, but the hiring of foreign soldiers by one country for use in a third is specifically illegal only for the 30 countries that ratified a 1989 treaty against their use. Those 30 do not include either the United States or Iraq.

"The trend toward outsourcing and privatizing various military functions by a number of member states in the past 10 years has resulted in the mushrooming of private military and security companies," the panel's 25-page report said.

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http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/17/asia/mercenaries.1-154107.php