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Filipino ex-cops and soldiers are among the growing
number of “mercenaries” recruited to provide security in Iraq, a
UN report said.
The UN report, which will be
presented next month, warned that methods used by private western
security companies do not prepare recruits for the conflict. The
strain, the report warned, could place recruits “in a situation
where they can violate human rights because they are armed.”
Private security guards employed
by western companies make up the second highest number of armed
forces currently posted in Iraq, after the US military but ahead of
the British troops, according to Jose Luis Gomez del Prado, the head
of a UN workgroup on the use of mercenaries.
Many of the recruits stem from
former police and military forces in the Philippines, Peru and
Equador, according to the workgroup, which recently conducted
missions to the latter two countries.
Unprepared
“They are trained quickly but
not prepared for armed conflict situations,” Gomez del Prado said.
“They are sent there, they
receive M16 [assault rifles] and are placed in very dangerous areas
like the Green Zone [in Baghdad], convoys and embassies,” he
added.
While the recruits sometimes
carry out important and honorable tasks like protecting humanitarian
organization convoys, they are also “in a situation where they can
violate human rights because they are armed,” according to the UN
expert.
“At least 160 companies are
operating in Iraq. They probably employ 35,000 to 40,000 people,”
Gomez del Prado said on the sidelines of a second workgroup session
in Geneva last week.
More than 400 of these private
employees have died in Iraq since 2003, putting their casualties
below the number suffered by US armed forces but ahead of British
military deaths, he said. “And a lot more have been injured.”
The workgroup is scheduled to
deliver a report to the UN Commission for Human Rights next month
emphasizing concerns over mercenary recruitment methods used by US
companies like Triple Canopy and Blackwater.
While Americans and Europeans
working in war zones for private security companies often make as
much as $10,000 (7,600 euros) a month, Peruvians doing the same job
seldom make more than $1,000, and their working rights are often
violated, Gomez del Prado said.
“The contracts they sign often
hide things that aren’t clear. The original is in English, which
most of them do not speak,” he said.
Labor rights
The recruits are entitled to the
labor rights applied in the country where the company hiring them is
headquartered, but the UN expert pointed out that it is hard to
imagine “a poor Peruvian filing suit in an American court.”
The number of private security
companies working in war zones like Iraq has exploded in recent
years, with one private security employee for every four US soldiers
currently stationed in Iraq.
That number is up from one
private security guard for every 50 US soldiers who took part in the
first Gulf war in 1990/91, Gomez del Prado said.
He is alarmed at the legal vacuum
in which these companies operate, pointing out that their activities
are not actually covered by the strict definition of mercenaries
given in the 1989 International Convention against the Use,
Recruitment, Financing and Training of Mercenaries, signed by 28
countries.
“It’s a bit like the
difference between the privateers and the pirates in the old
days,” he said.
--AFP
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