Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) and the Quest for Accountability

<p>Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) have constituted a perennial feature of the security landscape. Yet it is their involvement in and conduct during the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have transformed the outsourcing of security services into such a pressing public policy and world-order issue. The PMSCs’ ubiquitous presence in armed conflict situations as well as in post-conflict reconstruction their diverse list of clients (governments in the developed and developing world non-state armed groups intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and international corporations) and in the context of armed conflict situations involvement in instances of gross misconduct have raised serious accountability issues. The prominence of PMSCs in conflict zones has generated critical questions concerning the very concept of security and the role of private force a rethinking of essential governmental functions a rearticulation of the distinction between public/private and global/local in the context of the creation of new forms of security governance and a consideration of the relevance as well as limitations of existing regulatory frameworks that include domestic and international law (in particular international human rights law and international humanitarian law).</p><p>This book critically examines the growing role of PMSCs in conflict and post-conflict situations as part of a broader trend towards the outsourcing of security functions. Particular emphasis is placed on key moral legal and political considerations involved in the privatization of such functions on the impact of outsourcing on security governance and on the main challenges confronting efforts to hold PMSCs accountable through a combination of formal and informal domestic as well as international regulatory mechanisms and processes. It will be of interest to scholars policymakers practitioners and advocates for a more transparent and humane security order.</p><p>This book was published as a special issue of <em>Criminal Justice Ethics</em>.</p>