Abstract

In this episode, we turn to the role of the United Nations. Specifically, we will be talking to Dr Sorcha MacLeod about the vision of the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of people to self-determination. This working group is an independent expert body established by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council.

This series is presented by Dr Alessandro Arduino, principle research fellow, and Dr Ameem Lutfi, research fellow, at Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore.

Listen to the full podcast here:

Full transcript

Alessandro (Alex) Arduino: Welcome to the seventh episode of the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute’s podcast series: “Boots Off the Ground: Security in Transition in the Middle East and Beyond”. In this series, we look at the future of warfare, which will see uniform soldiers, or boots on the ground, being replaced by private military companies, autonomous weapon systems and cyber weapons.

One of the running themes in our podcasts has been the question of regulating the use of private military and private security. In our previous episodes, we had representatives from the multi-stakeholder regulatory body, International Code of Conduct Association (ICoCA), and trade organisation, International Stability Organisations Association (ISOA), encouraging self-regulation.

This episode, we turn to the role of the United Nations. Specifically, we will be talking about the vision of the United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of people to self-determination. This working group is an independent expert body established by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council.

My name is Alessandro Arduino and I will be the co-host for this series, along with my colleague, Ameem Lutfi.

Ameem Lutfi: Thank you, Alex. We’re very fortunate to have with us today Dr Sorcha MacLeod. Dr MacLeod is a member of the UN Working Group that was mentioned by Alex. The working group is mandated to monitor and examine the human rights impact of mercenaries, mercenary-related activities, and private military and security companies across the world.

Other than that, Dr MacLeod is also a Marie Curie fellow and associate professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her work focuses on private military security company and the privatisation of conflict. Thank you so much, Dr MacLeod, for being with us today.

Alex: Thank you Ameem, and thank you again Dr MacLeod for being with us today. Can I just kick start today’s podcast by asking you to give our listeners a background of the formation of the working group? Let me be more specific: where did the idea of the working group come from and who are the main stakeholders involved?

Sorcha MacLeod: Well, first of all, thank you, Alex and Ameem, for inviting me to take part in this podcast. The working group is very appreciative of your engagement with us and we’re happy to participate.

Well, the working group is, as you already said, a body created by the Human Rights Council, and we are part of what is known as the special procedures of the Human Rights Council. And Human Rights Council is a body of states within the UN system and its foremost human rights body.

What the council is able to do is to establish expert mechanisms and to appoint independent experts, either solo reporters, as in individuals, or as working groups, to look at specific human rights issues; it could be thematic or it could be country based. It’s important, I think, to recognise that we are truly independent. We are not employed by the UN and we work voluntarily (and unpaid) for the purposes of highlighting specific human rights issues and helping to ensure the protection of human rights issues around the particular mandate.

Now, as far as the working group and human rights is concerned, it was established back in 2005. Now, this is, of course, at the time when there was a lot of concern about the operations and activities of private military security companies (PMSCs), particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those activities and those operations were attracting a lot of international attention.

Now just to say something about our name; in your introduction, Alex, you read out our full title. It’s a very long title. It’s also a confusing title. I think we have the longest name of any special procedure. The title can be a little bit confusing.

So, notwithstanding the official name of the working group, we have a two-fold mandate. On the one hand, we focus our attention on human rights related issues associated with mercenaries and mercenary-related activities, but we also have a mandate to look at private military and security companies as well.

Over the years, the working group has devoted attention to both aspects of this mandate, but at the same time, we constantly strive to differentiate between the different types of actors that are covered by our mandate. This, as you can imagine, is very problematic and challenging because different terminologies are used in the public and international domains, so, we see the references to mercenaries, private military contractors, private combatants, foreign fighters. We also see references to private security providers, private military security companies. So there are a lot of different terminologies that are being used.

In terms of the members of the working group, we are five and we are geographically representative, in the sense that each of us comes from different parts of the world. So we have colleagues who represent Africa, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe; I am the WEOG representative, which stands for Western Europe and Others Group, and this includes North America, Australia and New Zealand.

We are appointed for a total of six years, that’s two terms of three years. In terms of what we can do and what activities we undertake, obviously, as I said, we’re a human rights body; but you also have to understand that what we can or cannot do is very much determined by the mandate that’s been given to us by the Human Rights Council.

So, just to give you a brief overview of what we do. For example: three times a year, we meet in session for a week at a time. Obviously, with the pandemic, that has been a bit problematic. So we’ve not been meeting in person, we’ve been meeting virtually. But normally, we meet twice in Geneva and once in New York, and we use those sessions to meet with different stakeholders. They could be states, civil society actors, industry representatives — a whole variety of different bodies — including people from the UN and other international organisations. And in that session, we will discuss and review different issues and situations that are of concern to us. And we’ll also use those sessions to hold expert consultations and sometimes public events.

We also hold those sorts of consultations and events outside of our sessions. We also prepare two thematic reports every year; we’re required to do that by our mandate. We have freedom to choose the topics that interest us or what we think are relevant. And we present one to the Human Rights Council and one to the UN General Assembly. Of course, we are focused on human rights impact, but also on international humanitarian law (IHL) violations that relate to mercenaries, mercenary-related activities and private military security companies.

And the third thing that we can do is that we are empowered to engage on specific allegations that concern human rights abuses and/or human IHL violations that are related to mercenaries, mercenary-related organisations and private military and security companies. And we do that through letters, communications that go to states, but also to other stakeholders, so we can write to, for example, private military and security companies as well. We seek information and clarification about those specific allegations and those communications, those letters, are made public. They’re available on the website of the working group as are any responses that we receive from states or any of the other actors.

And finally, in normal circumstances, we would undertake country visits and we would normally do two country visits a year. During those country visits — and they’re usually anywhere between a week to 10 days, maybe two weeks, depending on the country — looking at and  examining how, for example, private military security companies are regulated. So we will regularly do structures or we will look at how mercenaries are dealt with in a particular country, always with the aim of ensuring human rights protection and preventing human rights abuses and violations.

Ameem: Thank you, Dr MacLeod, for clarifying the nitty gritty, beyond the long title of the working group. If I can get you to talk a little bit about the latest report that was published, I think, in September. Now it pointed, at least to me, a very alarming trend. This trend of states increasingly privatising one of its very essential function of border control to private companies. Now, what do you think are some of the main factors behind this phenomenon?

Dr MacLeod: Thank you. We appreciate you highlighting our report; again, another one of our functions is to disseminate information about our mandate and about the activities of our mandate. And this is a report, as you said, on security aspects of immigration and border management, and we’re particularly concerned about the involvement of the private sector in this area. We presented it to the Human Rights Council, as you said, in September.

Now, this report is actually building on earlier research undertaken by the working group. So in previous years, for example, we have looked at the human rights impact of the PMSCs in a variety of different sectors, including the extractive sector, but always with an eye to looking at the wider privatisation trends in relation to security.

Now, what the working group has noticed is that the use of PMSCs in immigration and border management is part of a growing trend to the broader process of outsourcing what previously had been inherent state functions to private actors across all areas of governance. And this is more marked in some areas of the world than others. And it’s presented as a way of making service provision more nimble and cost efficient. Now this is despite the many studies and research that stress the related negative human rights impact of doing this.

While this turn towards the private sector in immigration and border management is part of broader trend towards greater privatisation of the government sector, there are also more specific factors that explain why this is happening in relation to immigration and border control. Firstly, we can see that states are increasingly adopting policies that heavily emphasise a security approach in handling migration. And countries of destination, in particular, are adopting laws and policies to tighten border controls and to significantly reduce irregular entry.

Now, what this means is that it’s translated into a larger demand and budgets for security services in general, for example, increase in requests for detention and rapid returns and removals. And so, this wide and growing range of private security services contracted by states in this sector means that immigration border management has become a multibillion dollar business.

And of course, as a logical consequence of that, companies in the sector seek to influence policies and regulation of the sector to benefit as much as possible from these lucrative contracts. So they have developed considerable lobbying capacity, and they have positioned themselves, and are positioning themselves, as subject matter experts in research and policy discussions. Which means that, of course, they are able to influence policies in their interest.

And that, of course, then translates into more restrictive and security oriented approaches to immigration. So you’ve got this sort of cycle going on. Now in our report, we elaborated on this aspect, and we stressed the considerable and entrenched influence that is garnered by such companies to the point that many states now depend on them for a wide range of aspects of immigration and border control.

Another important factor in the increasing reliance by states in relation to immigration and border control is the increasing reliance on new technologies to support the implementation of immigration and border control. So, for example, we see high tech surveillance and detection systems being implemented; we see the collection and storage of biometric data. Now this technology is constantly updated and it’s often developed, maintained and operated by companies from the private sector, which, of course, make them seem indispensable to implementing immigration and border control policies.

Now in our report, the working group identified the use of new technologies as a key element that has led to the securitisation of border control and, in turn, to a growing market for PMSCs services in immigration and border management, and also raises very serious human rights and questions.

Alex: I would like to look a little bit at morals; you mentioned human rights questions. You just said that there is negative impact on human rights, and also that the private security sector is trying to promote their business more. In this, we also see that supporters and defenders of security privatisation always try to shed the blame for violation of human rights by just using the fact that private security is just a tool.

So if you use a knife, a knife can be used either for cutting vegetables, let’s say, or to injure someone. And that’s a fact. But in the report, you mentioned specifically that private security services are not only responding to a pre-existing demand, but that they are actually creating for themselves a demand via lobbying and marketing. So in this respect, can you give us more details on how the private security industry is promoting this securitisation of border and immigration policies, besides the two or three points that you have just mentioned; from facial recognition, biometric and creating a rapport with government officials, and lobbying.

Dr MacLeod: Absolutely Alex. Your question raises very important elements that go beyond just the area of immigration and border management. Firstly, in relation to state responsibility for human rights violations and abuses in context of privatised security services, even if states outsource some tasks and services — for example, in relation to immigration and border management — nevertheless, they still retain the human rights obligations. And if we think about it from the immigration and border management perspective, if a state contracts with a company to operate, for example, migrant detention centre, that state still has to make sure that the conditions under which people are detained meet adequate human rights standards.

So that means that it has to ensure that there is adequate access to healthcare and, of course, that’s something that’s particularly important during the Covid-19 global pandemic; but also access to food; to make sure that there are hygienic standards maintained; and that no one is exposed to torture or to any other form of ill treatment. So the responsibility lies clearly with the state to make sure that those standards are articulated precisely and enforced. Not only that, it has to ensure that anyone who breaches those regulatory standards is held to account. And so this is why procurement processes, contracting processes, inspections, auditing, other monitoring and oversight tools are so important to make sure that such standards are, in fact, maintained and respected.

So that’s from the perspective of the state. The state always has that human rights obligation, even where it has privatised certain services. Now in relation to the companies, on the other hand, they have to recognise that their role goes beyond simple service provision. Companies, private military security companies, like any others, have to comply with national legislation and other regulation which would normally include human rights standards. So, for example, legislation provisions relating to non-discrimination, related to the use of force, and sexual and gender based violence.

Now this gets much more complicated if a company is contracted by one state to provide services in another state, extraterritorial. And again, it becomes further complicated if those services end up being further subcontracted to a number of different providers, and this is something that’s very common within the private security industry; we frequently see extraterritorial contracting. We also see frequent subcontracting.

Now our working group works within a broader human rights framework and this transnational aspect is taken into account within the existing international framework, in particular, the UN guiding principles on business and human rights. Now, the guiding principles they set out are that every business — and that would include PMSCs — has a corporate responsibility to respect human rights. Now, in particular, the guiding principles outlined that companies should take action to prevent or to mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to the operations, the products, or their services.

And this is what we call human rights due diligence and this human rights due diligence can entail a variety of different elements. So, for example, companies are expected to carry out human rights risk and impact assessments; they’re expected to put in place human rights policies and codes of conduct that will ensure that the company complies with human rights standards. They’re also expected to carry out vetting and training of staff. So, for example, to look at an individual’s history: has an individual been accused of war crimes or human rights violations in the past? And they’re also expected to put in place corporate level grievance mechanisms so that if somebody has a complete human rights complaint, they can go directly to the company if they choose to.

Now, this is especially important if a company is operating in a context where there are heightened risks of human rights abuses, and, of course, that’s often in armed conflict or post conflict situations, but not always. But in those sorts of situations, their operations can affect individuals or groups of individuals who are in very vulnerable circumstances. So when it comes to companies providing these types of services, before they provide them, a company should, in fact, asses and conclude that its operations will not contribute or cause human rights violations and abuses.

Now to give you an example in relation to the immigration and border and sector; some governments have contracted companies to carry out or to facilitate deportations and returns of migrants. And what this means is that there’s a potential risk for that company to become complicit in returning individuals who might be in need of protection. So, for example, someone who’s been a victim of human trafficking or returning an individual to a country where they’ll specifically be at risk of human rights violations or persecutions, and these are the sorts of risks that private military security companies should be assessing in their human rights impact assessments so that they avoid and contributing to human rights violations.

Now, the problem, of course, is enforcement. How do you actually enforce this framework? The guiding principles are non-binding. Only a few countries have made human rights due diligence mandatory or are considering doing it, using the process of considering implementing mandatory human rights due diligence. But the reality is that this is still predominantly a framework, a regulatory framework that is not binding and it’s soft law. So, from the workers’ perspective, there’s a lot to do in terms of raising awareness not only among states but also among the companies themselves. And we do see that companies are reacting to reputational risk. They do react to public outcry, divestment campaigns, for example, and even pressure from their own employees.

Ameem: Thank you for giving us the broad overview of the different phenomena that are shaping both the regulation and the monitoring mechanics of the private security industry. I want to get to a specific point where the report mentions, and again, the one talking about immigration and border control, the privatisation of those functions. And one of the phenomena that you mentioned is something called externalisation, where countries are now exporting, quite ironically, their border control to a third country, a country of transition, or the country where people leave from.

And there’s another reverse process, which I think you mentioned very briefly in your response to the first question, it’s about how technologies, new technologies developed for work abroad, are actually coming home to increase the securitisation of border at home. So I’m wondering if you could speak about these two processes: one is of things going outside, of the border going outside, and what’s coming back to solidify the border at home.

Dr MacLeod: Yes. I mean, it’s a really interesting, interesting issue now. In terms of externalisation, this has been used and, actually, is continuing to be used by countries of destination for migrants, and being used as a tool to distance themselves geographically, morally, and legally from the human rights obligations towards migrants. And increasingly, we’re also seeing that transit countries are seeking to enforce externalisation to prevent entry into their territories in the first instance. Now, what this means is that migrants are being dehumanised; it means that migrants are being framed as a threat to national security and, of course, this is of greatest concern to the working group.

It’s also generating demand for private security and increased surveillance and patrolling along migration routes. And the consequence of that is that it’s compelling migrants to take indirect and more dangerous routes to reach their destinations. Taken as a whole, externalisation means that migrants are often finding themselves trapped in the countries of first arrival or transit and they’re arriving in situations where the states’ capacities to provide them with appropriate protection are much lower, and they are being exposed to violence and abuse on a frankly massive scale.

Now, if we give you a specific example, the working group on the use of mercenaries and other UN bodies have repeatedly raised concerns — in the context of the working group through the communication letters that I mentioned in the introduction. We have repeatedly raised concerns, serious concerns, about the detention conditions and the mistreatment by private security companies contracted by Australia in relation to migrants detained in offshore centres Nauru and Manus Island in Papa New Guinea. And there’s increasing evidence that states are actually ramping up this this sort of externalisation, so it’s definitely something that the working group has had its eye on.

You also asked about new technologies. So in relation to the new technologies that are being used, that, if you like, are transported from armed conflicts, and are now being applied in border control and management. Well, this shift, if you like, also falls within the broader securitisation narrative that we’ve seen emerging that I’d mentioned earlier. And so what we see is that private military security companies are framing their services and as being a response to emergencies and to perceived threats to national security, to borders, etc, that, you know, the threat is that of migrants.

So, what we’re seeing is that equipment and technology that have been so called battlefield tested in crisis situations, in conflicts for example, are increasingly being used in immigration and border management. So we can see that, for example, the use of drones which are increasingly being used in border surveillance operations. So, of course, that raises significant concerns around the right to privacy, for example.

Alex: In this respect, now, I would like to move the discussion on to the part of the world in which our institute is more concerned with. And I would like to ask you if you noticed a trend that countries in the Middle East are also outsourcing policing of their borders and immigration control to the private sector.

Dr MacLeod: Thank you. We’re especially pleased to be able to engage with the National University of Singapore on this, because this is a region that often doesn’t receive enough attention on this matter. So we’re very happy to engage with you on this. And it’s definitely true that the trend has been more pronounced in countries of destinations for migrants.

Having said that, the use of private security services in relation to immigration and border control is definitely also taking hold elsewhere, including in the Middle East, for example. So far, the extent of that form of privatisation in the region has been more limited, but you’ve got to remember, of course, that private military security companies can, for example, be involved in capacity building projects and in the deployment of new technologies, and so they’re bringing with them the security approach to immigration and border management from countries where that privatisation process is more advanced and more entrenched.

Now more generally, what is often problematic is that there’s not enough publicly accessible and detailed information about how and to what extent do states contract private security services to support their immigration and border policies, to implement those policies, and also what mechanisms and measures they’ve taken to make sure that the contractors comply with human rights standards. And very often, even most basic information about what services are outsourced and to which companies is simply not available. And so this opacity, this lack of transparency, and lack of access to information makes effective monitoring, oversight and accountability very challenging.

Ameem: Thank you, Dr MacLeod. If I’m right, I think one of the issues that the working group takes very seriously is to try to pinpoint the definition or really identify the problem very clearly. And one of the approaches that I really appreciated that the working group is taking is that it’s trying to identify private military and security companies by how they function rather than how they identify themselves, or self-identification.

That takes me to whether that leads to some problems and questions. If, for example, a company is providing military and security services on a compensatory basis, no matter what their business officially claims to be, according to the report, it would be identified as a private military and security company. A couple of months back, we had Mr Doug Brook from ISOA and one of the things he was asked, was that, well, you know, if you’re in a war zone, and you run a trucking company and your employees have to be armed because of the nature of the terrain in which they work in, would they be identified as a PMSC? Or for that matter, one of the issues, one of the phenomena that the working group report highlights, is that airlines are now actually increasingly being involved in border control and the securitisation of borders. So would you now include, you know, at least some of the functions of these airlines within the category of PMSC?

Dr MacLeod: Thank you. It’s a highly contentious issue as I think you’re both well aware. This issue of definitions is definitely contentious. Now, my working group, we have elaborated our own definition, our own working definition of PMSC which emphasises the broad nature of services that are provided by these companies, and I’ve talked already about how they are expanding into new areas, immigration border control being one of them. And we focus on the nature of the services provided by the companies rather than how the companies self-identify. You have got to, again, remember that we are coming from a human rights perspective. So that’s our priority — ensuring the protection and respect for human rights. And this is the approach that we take in our latest reports.

And so the emphasis on the activities and the services carried out by these companies is even more important, as I just said, because these are companies that are constantly evolving, constantly changing and widening their range of operations. And you know, we’ve seen, as we mentioned, that they’re positioning themselves as emergency responders responding to the so-called threat of migrants. But we’re also seeing this in relation to new technologies and cyber technologies.

And the other thing that’s important to remember here is that particularly with the larger private security companies, they have often very complex corporate structures and they can, you know, operate as conglomerates and joint ventures. There’s a lot of frequent acquisitions and mergers going on in the industry. There’s also a significant amount of subcontracting again as we mentioned earlier. All of these things taken together, it makes it very difficult to put a very clear cut label on these companies.

Now from the working group’s perspective, the focus on activities or the services that these companies provide, it’s much more helpful and useful for capturing the human rights impact that are posed by the operation of private military security companies. And as I said, that’s fundamentally, you know, the source of our mandate, and that’s what we’re here to do.

So what we’re interested in is looking at what activities or what services qualify as private military security services and which of them entail heightened risks, heightened impact of human rights violations and abuses. Now, this can be down to the particular nature of the activity. So for example, if we’re talking about an activity that involves the use of force, or it’s context specific, so dependent on the particular operational context, so when we’re talking about an armed conflict or we’re talking about security providers being in contact with individuals in vulnerable situations, for example, migrants. So by concentrating on the potential human rights impact, it also offers us much needed flexibility to cover the changing and widening scope of private military security services. So, this approach, in our view, should therefore be the starting point for regulatory monitoring oversight efforts if they’re going to be effective in preventing and addressing address human rights impact by this very wide range of existing and ongoing and expanding private military security activities.

Actually one state has actually taken this approach in its domestic legislation. If we look at the Swiss federal law on private security services provided abroad, that legislation takes the approach of regulating the services that are provided abroad and not what the company calls itself or what how the company self-identifies, so we are seeing that even, you know, at the legislative level.

Now, I think you also asked a question about airlines potentially being involved. In this context, in our report, we do not describe them as private military and security companies. And so if you understand our approach, which is to look at the services, our report notes that they provide specific private security services in the area of immigration and border management. In particular, they carry out deportations and returns, but they actually also enforce carrier sanctions.

Now, again from the human rights perspective, this means that airlines can become complicit in human rights violations. For example, again, we mentioned this earlier, if an individual is returned to a place where he may be at risk of torture or some other form of ill treatment. Now, we’ve seen some airlines refusing to transport children, for example, who were separated from their families in the United States and several American Airlines reportedly refused to transport those children who had been separated from their families in the context of the zero tolerance policy.

Alex: In this respect, please allow me to continue the discussion. We’re trying to define PMSC by looking at structure, by looking at service. But one of the key definitions in the features of private military and security companies that report identifies is that they have to be compensated for their military and security service. So starting with the fact that this compensation always has to be monetary, if we look at a hypothetical case, having a patriotic security company, let’s say from Russia to the United States, offering to defend the border voluntarily, not for a compensation, or let’s say maybe in the future in exchange for bigger deals from the government or for a subsidy, not even directly for this company. In this hypothetical case, would it qualify as a private military security company?

Dr MacLeod: The working group’s definition identifies private military security companies as corporate entities that are providing services on a compensation basis. And what that means is we include organisations, commercial organisations, that are legally registered according to a given state’s applicable rules and regulations, and that they seek to make a profit from the operations.

Now having said that, we have to recognise that there’s a very broad spectrum of actors involved here. And what I think we’re starting to to get towards is, if you like, the sorts of examples that are moving us to perhaps a slightly murkier end of the spectrum, and where we start to see the lines blurring with other types of actors, which, of course, would include mercenaries. Now it’s important here to distinguish between, on the one hand, the companies that are operating and complying with a clearly defined legal framework, and on the other hand, entities or organisations whose identity, whose ownership, and whose motivations are extremely opaque, extremely ambiguous, and very often purposely so.

Now, to give an example, this seems to be the case with the so called Wagner group, which attracts a variety of different descriptions. So we see it being described as a private military company or a paramilitary group, but also, it’s been described as a semi-state security force, and an organisation like that really highlights these legal ambiguities regarding its formal registration and corporate identity.

Now, other organisations and companies seek to obscure their legal personality and their ownership structures, and in trying to do so, they will actively seek out states with weak regulatory frameworks, or they might even create shell companies. What we’re seeing here is a pervasive opacity, pervasive ambiguity, and this makes it very difficult to identify the applicable laws and applicable regulations as well to determine who the clients are of these types of organisations, what their objectives are, what the sources of funding are. And it also raises really serious concerns about the legality of their operations, especially if they’re operating in situations where there’s armed conflict or where there’s widespread violence and weak rule of law.

Now just to come back to Wagner for a moment, the working group has received reports about the alleged deployment of Russian private military personnel, possibly from the Wagner group in the conflict in Libya in support of one of the parties to the conflict, the Libyan National Army. There’ve been allegations that Wagner personnel were involved in the summary execution of a group of civilians. Now, from the working group’s perspective, there are significant challenges in determining who exercised operational command, and who exercised operation control over these individuals. It’s almost impossible to determine what type of compensation or what level of compensation they actually received, and what sort of accountability mechanisms, if any, were in place.

Now, our wider concern is that the opaque and ambiguous nature of private military security providers can be used by states or other stakeholders to intervene in an armed conflict or in other contexts, while at the same time, denying their involvement and therefore avoiding their obligations under international law and this carries significant risks that human rights violations and abuses, and IHL violations for that matter, will go unpunished.

Ameem: Thank you, since we’re already on the issue of how different countries and different cases coming in and kind of complicating our understanding of how this industry or this phenomena really works, I want to shift the focus to the part of the world that we’re situated in right now, namely Singapore. Here in Singapore, the interest, really, in the last decade or so, has been on private companies offering security insurances, particularly in relationship to maritime security. Now, I think one big question is more broadly, do insurance companies which don’t perhaps directly, you know, touch on the issue of human rights directly, do they come into the analysis as well?

And also specifically about Singapore, what do you think about the role of, or can there be a role for, Singapore within the working group as well?

Dr MacLeod: Thank you. I mean, as I said at the beginning, the working group is very happy to be engaged with the stakeholders in East Asia and we’re very eager to engage with states from the region within the framework of our mandate.

Now, as a general rule, East Asia, and for that matter, Southeast Asia, is a region in which we in the working group receive relatively limited information with respect to PMSCs as well as mercenary activities. So we would absolutely welcome engaging with Singapore, as well as other states in the region, to learn more about the particular challenges that you face in the region as well as the good practices that are that are being developed, particularly in relation to regulation of the sector. And this could be particularly useful and relevant to help us better understand the use of private security in maritime security, which is an important part of the PMSC industry, but it’s very specific and very challenging to grasp.

As I mentioned, when I explained the work of the working group, one of the possibilities that we have when we engage with states is to carry out country visits, and that would be one specific way in which Singapore could support our mandate, by inviting us to do a country visit, where we can delve into these issues in much more detail.

We would also very much encourage Singapore to take part in the intergovernmental, open-ended working group that’s been mandated by the Human Rights Council to elaborate on the contents of an international regulatory framework for PMSCs, that would be on an international regulatory basis.

We would also encourage Singapore to consider joining some of the other international initiatives that we’ve not had time to talk about today, like the Montreux Document Forum, for example, the International Code of Conduct Association. The strategic position of Singapore in the region and its experience with maritime security, we feel, could be of particular added value.

Alex: Thank you very much, Dr MacLeod. Please just allow me to end this interview and ask the question that we ask all our guests, and that is, what will the future of warfare and security management in a complex environment look like in the coming 30 years? And most importantly, I will ask you to do something more, that is introduce to our audience the upcoming report on mercenary activity that you’re planning to release soon. I do believe it would be in just a few days’ time. Thank you.

Dr MacLeod: Thank you Alex, and thank you for mentioning our report. As I said at the beginning, we produced two reports. One report was on immigration and border management, but our second report, which is going to the UN General Assembly and will be presented, I think, at the beginning of November, actually touches on your question about the future of warfare. In this report, we’re looking at the changes that are emerging and remaking contemporary armed conflicts and what effects these changes are having on the forms and manifestations of mercenary and mercenary-related activities.

In the report, we highlight that in parallel to considerable changes in contemporary armed conflicts, a broad range of activities has developed that can be, to a greater or lesser extent, linked to mercenaryism. And in some cases, these activities led to the intensification and prolonging of conflicts, and of course, subsequently resulted in human rights abuses and violations of IHL.

Now, one of the key elements highlighted in the report is the great variety and multitude of actors involved in contemporary armed conflicts who share characteristics with mercenaryism, mercenaries, while at the same time not falling squarely within the very rigid international legal definition of mercenaries. So this makes it very challenging again to address their activities and to address the human rights and IHL implications in any sort of coherent manner, and it’s something that’s likely to continue with the increased use of new technologies and development of cyber capabilities. This multitude and proliferation of actors involved adds complexity to determining who’s involved, how they’re involved and who’s responsible for potential human rights violations and IHL violations.

Another key element, before I finish, that we emphasise in the report, is again this pervasive secrecy and opacity that surround mercenaryism/mercenary related activities. And it’s particularly evident and stark when such actors are used to remotely influence armed conflicts, which gives the patrons, you know, so called plausible deniability over their involvement, and from our perspective, this constitutes a particular threat to the respect of human rights and humanitarian rules. Those are just a couple of the main issues that we develop further in the report.

All of our reports are available on the working group’s website. People are free to access them there and we would very much welcome your listeners to read our reports and absolutely to reach out to the working group if they want to engage with us on particular topics, or on particular situations.

Ameem: Thank you so much, Dr MacLeod, thank you for joining us. And really, I mean, thank you for all the work that you’ve been doing with the working group; it is an essential service and it is a really important role that I’m glad that, you know, you’re putting everything into it. And listening to what you talk about today really gave us a good insight into all the complicated decision making that has to go into deciding something that is so actually delicate and difficult.

So thank you for all that and also, please allow me to thank the “Boots Off the Ground” group at MEI, without whom this podcast would have never been possible, namely Kevin Ray and Lim Wei Chean from the events and communication team, and MEI Associate Director Carl Skadian. And also special thanks to all the listeners. Please keep on following us on the various social media platforms and send us your comments and feedback. We’d love to hear from you. That’s all for today. Thank you so much, everyone.