GENEVA - Seventeen countries have agreed on rules to ensure that private military companies operating in war zones do not break international humanitarian law or abuse human rights, a senior Swiss diplomat said on Wednesday.
The document brings together current laws and obligations to dispel the notion that private military and security companies operate in a legal void, said Paul Seger, head of international law at the Swiss foreign ministry.
"The main advantage of this document is to assemble the essential legal norms that do exist and put them in one document," Seger told Reuters in an interview after government experts approved the paper.
Participants include states where private military firms are based, such as the United States and Britain, and where they operate, such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
The document results from an initiative launched in late 2005 by the Swiss government and International Committee of the Red Cross to promote respect for international humanitarian law and human rights law by private firms operating in armed conflicts.
It emphasises that even if states contract out military and security services they retain their obligations under international law, and must prevent violations, Seger said.
And it confirms that private military companies also have obligations.
Besides gathering existing law to reaffirm and clarify the obligations of states, the document also catalogues 70 good practices, defining criteria for vetting companies and monitoring and supervising them.
Security companies and non-governmental organisations participated in the meetings leading up to the document.
"The 'good' members of this sector would really like to see this document which defines what their obligations are," Seger said.
The 17 countries agreeing the document are Afghanistan, Angola, Australia, Austria, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Iraq, Poland, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United States. Russia had participated in earlier meetings, a Swiss foreign ministry spokesman said.
Governments have increasingly outsourced security functions such as guarding embassies and providing escorts to private companies, which are also employed by media and aid organisations and businesses operating in insecure areas.
One of the best known is Blackwater Worldwide, the controversial private security firm that guards U.S. government personnel in Iraq and elsewhere.
Blackwater faced heavy criticism and an FBI investigation over the killing of 17 Iraqi civilians in a crowded Baghdad square last September.
Iraq has demanded the right to try the Blackwater guards for what it calls a massacre, but the question of where and how the contractors an be tried has yet to be publicly resolved.
