By Dan Kenney

This report shares some of the valuable information I gained this past weekend at the conference on The Privatization of Security & Human Rights in the Americas: Perspectives from the Global South. The first portion of the report outlines the present condition of private militaries in Latin America. This is followed by my reflections on what this may mean to us and our work.

The Havens Center of the University of Wisconsin Madison, along with Politics and Society sponsored a two day conference to discuss current research and plan for further study into the issue of mercenary use in Latin America and around the world. The Chair, Jose Luis Gomez del Prado of the UN Working Group established by the Commission on Human Rights was a presenter and participant in the conference. He was joined by Amada Benavides de Perez, one of the five members of the group.

The conference was also attended by many others who have been working in the field of study related to the use of private military and security companies for several years. I along with two activists from Colombia and one from Peru were also presenters and participants. The Havens Center was established on the campus with the vision of bringing activists and academics together to work for positive social change.

It will be difficult to summarize thirty pages of notes. Let me begin by saying it was a great learning experience. My participation in this event on behalf of noprivatearmies.org and the Clearwater Project now provides us a seat at the table and a voice in the global discussion of creating a model law for the UN group to present to other countries they visit and in the final recommendations they submit to the UN General Assembly.

The group formed this weekend will continue to dialogue and share research over the next few months. We will meet again in November in Bogotá to draft a model law as one step in a greater effort to rein in and hold accountable the spreading business of private military companies.

I am astounded at all I know now compared to what I knew just last year when we first formed Clearwater. The issue is so much larger than just Blackwater. I’ll do my best to just summarize briefly some of the key points I learned this weekend.

The UN group has been conducting "field missions" for two years to gather information about human rights violations by PMSCs around the world. Let me share a few facts from the presentations given about three Latin American countries.

We will begin with Colombia. The number of private military and security personnel has increased from 141,462 in 2000 to 256,526 in 2006. During the same time period the number of state soldiers increased from 41,114 to 75,181. Yet surveys continue to show that instead of more security the citizens are feeling less secure. During this time the number of murders, especially in the border regions has increased not decreased. Actually there has been a marked increase in violence.

In Colombia there is also the issue of DynCorp eradication spraying as part of Plan Colombia. There is inconsistent at best, and often no adherence to rules or guidelines for the spraying. At least 4 peasant farmers have been killed, many more poisoned. The hazardous spraying has also caused high amounts of toxins into the groundwater. Fifteen percent of the internally displaced population is related to the eradication program. It also threatens food security.

State terrorism within the country is carried out by private mercenary companies. The use of violence by the state against its own citizens has led to three million displaced people, creating an acute humanitarian crisis. There have been thousands of human rights violations. Every year Colombia is certified on the Human Rights Watch list.

One of the presenters from Colombia, Diana Milena Murcia, is a human rights lawyer. She has been working with the citizens to hold Tribunals of the People on the violations and those responsible. This is a way for some healing to take place through the truth telling and the victims sharing their stories.

In Peru there are 340 companies at the national level employing 50,000 individuals. It has reached a level where in Lima there are 1,200 employed by private companies and only 700 police officers employed by the city. Also as is true in so many places around the world there are some who work both for the private sector and the public. It is the wealthy who have the security while the poor arm themselves for their security.

When Triple Canopy contracted Peruvians for work in Afghanistan and in Iraq they forced over 80% of them to sign their contracts while in the air over the ocean so that they were not part of any particular jurisdiction. They also do not provide any follow up on injuries, or deaths. Their contracts protect the company from all liability.

In Chile there is over 1,000 companies. 23% employ fewer than 50 people. The security industry generates 1,000 jobs.

According to the Mauricio Lazala, who presented on behalf of the Business Human Rights Resource Center in London, there are over 1.25 million employed with private security or private military companies throughout all of Central and South America. The Business and Human Rights Center publishes complaints of human rights violations by companies around the world and then allow the companies to publish their response. They have a section for Blackwater that you can access by using their internal search window.

Another valuable resource for us in our education component is the International Peace Academy website. It has a data base of over 150 scholars, activists, and others working the field to tackle the issue of PMSCs.

To close I'd like to summarize some of the key themes that continued to recur throughout the conference. One is that of how fast and how vast the private military and security industry has grown. It has spread with the privatization of the economies around the world that Naomi Klein outlines so completely in her new book, The Shock Doctrine; also just as we have seen the lack of transparency and accountability in other realms of the privatization movement spawned by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics, so it is just as true with the private military companies.

Thus far governments have only gone through the motions of attacking the symptoms of private militaries and security companies. However no government, nor any other association, is attacking the class division which is the root cause of the industry's growth. We have come to a point where what is happening in Latin America, Africa, and all around the globe is that a variety of "green zones" are being established for the international corporations and their partners. These enclaves are guarded with armed security paid for by the wealthy at the cost of the poor. Private companies draw individuals from the desperate oppressed population to protect the exploiters from harm at the hands of the oppressed. "All the actions of the dominant class manifest its need to divide in order to facilitate the preservation of the oppressor state." 1 Yet their very protection of the wealthy continues the oppression of the majority of citizens. This circumstance thus creates a situation where the population that can not afford to buy protection feels more insecure. The population then attempts to arm themselves to satisfy their basic safety needs, for even the poor needs to feel a since of security to be fully human.

The other factor in the equation of the private military and security and safety equation is the lack of political will on the part of the nation states, both weak and strong. This of course is no surprise to us who have been at this work for sometime. We know that moneyed interests drive the political agenda. Thus the use of private military to guard them and their interests is a natural progression from their position of privatized power. It is as if the private militaries, the mercenaries, have become the private armies of the international corporations.

It will be the task of the people to end this spiraling out of control tempest. Until the people of the host countries as well as the funding countries recognize our solidarity, which will require true communication, this established practice that threatens our society will continue. The politicians are dependent upon the money of these same international corporations. That is why there is scant discussion any longer of getting rid of these private armies. Even at the conference there seemed to be a resignation to the fact that these companies are here with us and that we need to focus on regulation rather than extinction. All those in a position to drive the dialogue need to recognize that if there is no political will to follow up on the regulation it continues to be mere window dressing designed to confuse and throw off track the average citizen.

What became evident in country after country was those who could not afford protection in a state of growing insecurity went about the task of arming themselves any way they could. The weapons are available or they make their own. The will to survive is strong especially when the political will to protect all of the citizens is missing.

We have reached the point in our history as a country and our history as a civilization on this planet where we have allowed the outsourcing of our jobs, our education, our health care, and now our very sovereignty.

The road before us is long and there is much wok to be done. I, for one, will carry these words spoken by a Peruvian explaining why he would be willing to risk his life for pay as a contractor for Triple Canopy. This is after he was in Iraq for two years. His words sum up simply and tragically the whole desperate issue. He said, "I'd rather die in a war than die of hunger in my own country." 2