HUMAN RIGHTS: Modern-Day Mercenaries

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Mar 15 2000 (IPS) - Mercenaries around the globe continue responding to traditional methods of recruitment, and new techniques as well, such as contracts with private military security companies, said United Nations special rapporteur on mercenaries, Enrique Bernales.

A report prepared by Bernales for the coming session of the UN Human Rights Commission largely focuses on mercenary attacks against Cuba’s tourist industry, and urges states to update their laws to make mercenary activity a specific offence in their criminal codes.

The fact that a crime suspect was acting as a mercenary should be taken into account as an aggravating factor, argues the report, which the Human Rights Commission will study at its annual period of sessions, to be held Mar 20 to Apr 28.

In 1987, the commission named a special rapporteur to study the use of mercenaries in connection with violations of human rights and the right of countries to free determination.

Bernales recommended that the United Nations carry out studies on the adverse effects of mercenary activities on human rights and the exercise of free determination.

Mercenaries, he said, often stress the advantage of using their services due to their high level of military preparedness and the fact that they do not feel bound to respect human rights or international humanitarian law.

The report recommended that the commission condemn the recruitment, use, training and financing of mercenaries to launch attacks such as the spate of bombings that occurred in Havana in 1997.

In the attacks on tourist facilities, mercenaries were used to violate the right to life, integrity and safety of residents of the Cuban capital and visiting tourists, said Bernales.

The special rapporteur came to the conclusion that the bombings, which cost the life of an Italian tourist, were planned, organised and financed from abroad, with no internal support – which meant they were an attempt at violating the right of the Cuban people to free determination.

On an official visit to Cuba last year, Bernales visited, in prison, the Salvadoran and Guatemalan mercenaries who declared that they were repentant of their participation in the incidents, and have collaborated with Cuban investigators to root out and prevent further attacks.

The two Salvadorans, Raúl Ernesto Cruz León and Otto René Rodríguez Llerena, have appealed the death sentences they were handed by a Cuban court.

In his report, the UN rapporteur, who said he was personally opposed to capital punishment, expressed his hope that the death sentences would be commuted.

The attacks staged by the mercenaries targetted Cuba’s rapidly growing tourist industry because it is the chief foreign exchange earner of the Caribbean island nation, which was visited by 340,000 tourists in 1990 and 1.7 million in 1999, said the report.

Although the International Convention on the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries was approved by the UN General Assembly 10 years go, it has only been ratified by 19 states. In order to go into effect, the treaty must be adhered to by 22 countries.

Bernales also recommended that an international agreement be reached on regulating the activities of companies that provide international and national military assistance and security services.

The report states that intervention by such companies in armed conflicts and the recruitment and use of mercenaries is detrimental to international order and must not be tolerated.

Canadian academic Kim Richard Nossal, in an article in the International Committee of the Red Cross publication this week “War, Money and Survival”, also addressed the problem of mercenaries.

Nossal said that “wandering mercenaries”, widely used in armed conflicts in Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, appeared only occasionally in the 1990s, such as in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire).

Transnational security companies or private military outfits that have emerged on the international scene are more frequently used today, he pointed out.

Unlike the “wandering mercenaries” of the past, the new companies are a phenomenon of the post-Cold War period, says Nossal, who explains that they are run according to business criteria, and are managed by administrators who have no stake in the fighting.

Like companies in other sectors, the private military firms are concerned about their public image, and engage in public relations activities, said Nossal, a political science professor at the University of Hamilton, in Ontario.

He pointed out that a number of transnational security companies were operating on the world market by the early 1990s, such as the South African firm Executive Outcomes (EO), the US- based Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI), and Gurkha Security Guards, a British firm that mainly employs former Gurkha soldiers of the British army.

Another company based in Britain, Sandline International, has close ties to EO, the South African outfit known for its successful military interventions in Angola and Sierra Leone, says the article.

Nossal said the US government enthusiastically approved of the contract MPRI signed in the mid-1990s for training the Croatian army, and that Washington made an effort to get the South African EO kicked out of Angola, and MPRI hired in its place.

The report by Bernales also cites a communique by the government of Georgia, which denied that it hired mercenaries, but admitted that they might have been active in areas outside of its control.

The communique stated that certain inhabitants of Abkhazia, who staged terrorist attacks and committed genocide against ethnic Georgians, participated in the conflict in Chechnya, in Russia. It added that Russian mercenaries took part in the conflicts in the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

According to the government of Georgia, the mercenaries, who reportedly come from northern Caucasia, took part in the genocide against ethnic Georgians and violated the sovereignty of the Georgian state.

The future of the mandate of the special rapporteur on mercenaries is uncertain. The working group created to streamline the work of the Human Rights Commission has not reached agreement on whether to extend the mandate in 2001, reformulate it, or declare its conclusion.

The Geneva-based non-governmental International Service for Human Rights reported that most Western states would like to see the question of mercenaries moved from the orbit of the Human Rights Commission to the Sixth Commission of the UN General Assembly.

The NGO added that countries in Africa that initially looked kindly on the mandate of the special rapporteur had lost their enthusiasm since Bernales reported the existence of contracts between mercenary groups and several African governments.

But other non-governmental organisations want the special rapporteur on mercenaries to remain under the competence of the Human Rights Commission.