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	Draft UN Treaty seeks rules for private security firms operating in War Zones by Thalif Deen Inter Press Service   June 2010   A United Nations Working Group that monitors the activities of mercenaries worldwide is now trying to rein in human rights abuses by private military and security companies (PMSCs), which are being increasingly deployed in war zones and peacekeeping operations.   A draft International Convention on the Regulation, Surveillance and Monitoring of PMSCs, which is to be presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva next September.   The proposed draft, which spells out legislative oversight and judicial measures to punish private security firms for unlawful acts, has also been submitted to member states for their comments.   If the treaty is approved by the U.N. General Assembly, perhaps next year, all 192 member states will be called upon to abide by it.   Amada Benavides, a member of the Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries, said a new convention was necessary because the current definition of "mercenaries" could not be applied to PMSCs and their employees.   A "mercenary" is categorised as an individual gun for hire, while PMSCs are collective enterprises established as legal entities.   After three years of negotiations and discussions, the Working Group has finalised a draft related exclusively to PMSCs, she added.   In the 1990s, there were more than 100 new private military companies offering their services to governments, multinational companies, humanitarian agencies, NGOs and to the United Nations.   According to the latest statistics from the U.S. Department of Defence released in April, there are now more private contractors than U.S. troops in Afghanistan alone: 107,292 civilian contractors compared with 78,000 soldiers.   The duties of these PMSCs include protecting personnel and military bases, providing staff at checkpoints, training police forces, advising on security and military strategy, providing and maintaining weapons and ammunition, interrogating suspects and prisoners, providing intelligence services and even participating in combat operations, said Benavides.   The U.N. Common Supply Database (UNCSD) reportedly consists of several PMSCs, including Sandline International, IDG Security, and Greystone of the Blackwater Group.   Jayantha Dhanapala, a former U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, told IPS: "I find it deeply disturbing that the U.N. should be hiring private security firms in what is a creeping privatisation of the security functions of states and international organisations."   He said that Blackwater, and Sandline International before that, both private security firms, "have exposed the accountability shortcomings in these arrangements, especially in the context of the Geneva Conventions" governing the rules of war, particularly in the treatment of prisoners of war (POWS) and civilians.   "The linkages of the security firms hired should be transparent to the member states of the U.N. at all times," he added.   Meanwhile, there has been a claim by 250 plaintiffs under the alien tort act accusing some of these PMSCs of rape and threats of rape; sexual assaults; electric shocks and beatings; prolonged hanging from limbs; forced nudity of POWs; hooding; isolated detention and religious intolerance.   Following a conference on Haiti in March, which was organised by a trade association representing many PMSCs, 18 NGOs wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging that funds pledged by the United States and other members of the international community "should be directed towards rebuilding Haiti, not to international private security contractors".   The estimated value of the PMSC industry rose from 33 billion dollars in 1990 to about 100 billion dollars in 2006. That figure is expected to increase to over 200 billion dollars in 2010, according to Benavides.   Some of these private security companies companies have been accused of advising the CIA on torture and also trained police forces in torture techniques in at least one Latin American country.   The killings of some 17 civilians in Nisoor Square in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad in September 2007 have been attributed to one of the security contractors hired by the United States.   Phillip Alston, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Summary Executions, says that the existence of a zone of de facto impunity for killings by private contractors operating in Iraq and elsewhere has been tolerated for far too long.   "Government officials, with whom I met, acknowledged this lack of accountability, and it now seems to be recognised that this vacuum is neither legally or ethically defensible - nor politically sustainable," he added. Visit the related web page
	Campaigners say Bhopal court verdict "too little and too late" by News agencies India   7 June 2010   Convictions over a gas plant leak that killed thousands of people in 1984 in the Indian city of Bhopal have been heavily criticised by campaigners, with Amnesty International describing the two-year sentences for eight people as "too little, too late".   The convictions are the first since the disaster at the Union Carbide plant - the world''s worst industrial accident. The eight Indians, all former plant employees, were convicted of "death by negligence". One was convicted posthumously. The others are expected to appeal.   Nityanand Jayaraman, of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal campaign group, told the BBC the punishment imposed on Union Carbide was wholly inadequate.   Twenty-five years after the world''s worst industrial disaster, people have finally been held legally responsible.   But the verdict is being described as more symbolic than just by rights groups and NGOs who have been working with the maimed gas victims.   They say that two-year prison sentences for Indians found guilty over the tragedy which killed thousands is an indictment of the country''s slow-moving criminal justice system and investigative agencies.   Campaigners would like to see the former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson, the prime accused in the case, brought to justice. A warrant for his arrest was issued by an Indian court in 2003 but never acted on.   Satinath Sarangi, an activist campaigning on behalf of Bhopal victims, told the BBC that justice would not be done until US executives from Union Carbide at the time of the incident were brought to India to face justice.   "The charges that have been laid on the Indian accused have essentially been the charges that you would put for a traffic accident. This is indeed a very sad day for us."   Another rights activist said "I feel that it portends ill for the country that industrialists and corporations are being told that they can actually get away with murder, and today''s verdict is essentially that - a signal that after the world''s worst industrial disaster, the people who were accused of that are just being let off with a rap on the knuckles."   Forty tonnes of a toxin called methyl isocyanate leaked from the pesticide factory and settled over slums in Bhopal on 3 December 1984.   Official figures show at least 3,000 people died at the time and as many as 15,000 have died since. Campaigners put the death toll as high as 25,000 and say the horrific effects of the gas continue to this day.   Amnesty International also called on the Indian and US governments to take legal action against US executives of Union Carbide.   "These are historic convictions, but it is too little, too late," said Audrey Gaughran, an Amnesty director. "Twenty-five years is an unacceptable length of time for the survivors of the disaster and families of the dead to have waited for a criminal trial to reach a conclusion.   "While the Indian employees have now been tried and convicted, the foreign accused have been able to evade justice simply by remaining abroad. This is totally unacceptable."   Rashida Bee, president of the Bhopal Gas Women''s Workers group, told the AFP news agency that "justice will be done in Bhopal only if individuals and corporations responsible are punished in an exemplary manner".   The site of the former pesticide plant is now abandoned. It was taken over by the state government of Madhya Pradesh in 1998, but environmentalists say poison is still found there.   Campaigners say Bhopal has an unusually high incidence of children with birth defects and growth deficiency, as well as cancers, diabetes and other chronic illnesses.   Twenty years ago Union Carbide paid $470m in compensation to the Indian government. Dow Chemicals, which bought the company in 1999, says this settlement resolved all existing and future claims against the company.   Doctors estimate that about 19,000 people still suffer chronic ailments from having inhaled the gas. An abnormally large number of Bhopal babies continue to be born with severe deformities because their mothers - themselves children at the time of the disaster - breathed in the chemical.   What should have been a moment of celebration at justice being done has become a bitter joke for the victims.   ''The people who needed to hear the verdict are long dead and gone,'' said Avinash Kothari, an activist who has worked with the victims. Most of them were poor Indians, rickshaw pullers and manual labourers, who were sleeping in the slum next to the plant.   Mr Kothari said it was the Indian legal system that was responsible for the hideous delay. ''You can''t blame Union Carbide for that. It was up to us Indians to give justice to the victims, not delay it for more than two decades.''   During the trial, 178 prosecution witnesses were examined and more than 3000 documents produced. It is routine for trials in India to take 15-30 years.   Those convicted were originally were charged with culpable homicide but, to the indignation of survivors, the charges were diluted by the Indian government in 1996 to negligence, an offence that carries a maximum sentence of two years'' imprisonment.   Cancer researcher Dr N. Ganesh, research officer at Jawarhalal Nehru Cancer Hospital in Bhopal, who treats babies with abnormalities born to Bhopal survivors, was dismayed at the delayed verdict.   ''The convicted will now appeal against the verdict and that will drag on for years,'' he said. ''Meanwhile, Bhopal is in agony. One patient of mine has given birth to three Down syndrome children.''   Studies released last year showed the slums around the site were still laced with lethal chemicals that are polluting groundwater and soil, causing birth defects.
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