https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0714-1036
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ABSTRACT
A prominent anti-mercenary norm entrepreneur in the second half of the twentieth century, the United Nations (UN) has become an equally prominent user of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) services in the twenty-first century. In this article, we explain the gap between UN talk and action on private providers of security as a form of organized hypocrisy. To map the mismatch between UN rhetoric and behaviour in a measurable fashion, we combined official data on the use of PMSCs with an in-depth content analysis of the reports written by the UN Working Group on Mercenaries and an examination of the UN Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) contracting policy. The Working Group’s very negative portrayal of PMSCs and the UNDSS caveat that armed contractors should only be used as a last resort and stands in stark contrast with UN agencies’ widespread use of private security providers. Although a decoupling between talk and action is often inevitable for complex organizations simultaneously pursuing contradictory objectives like the UN, our findings have important implications for peacekeeping. Most notably, organized hypocrisy is in danger of challenging the UN’s credibility as a norm entrepreneur, hindering the effectiveness of its agencies’ outsourcing practices and delaying the reform of UN peacekeeping and crisis management at large.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Lipson, “Peacekeeping: Organized Hypocrisy.” For a critique, see Von Billerbeck, “No Action without Talk.”
2 Egnell, “The Organised Hypocrisy of International State-Building”; Hirschmann, “Peacebuilding in UN Peacekeeping Exit Strategies”; Everett, Humanitarian Hypocrisy.
3 Weaver, Hypocrisy Trap: The World Bank and the Poverty of Reform.
4 Cusumano, “Migrant Rescue as Organized Hypocrisy”; Knill, Steinebach, and Fernández-i-Marín, “Hypocrisy as a Crisis Response?”; Lavenex, “Failing Forward’ Towards Which Europe?”
5 UN Secretary General, “Use of Private Security,” para. 8.
6 UN Department of Safety and Security, “Guidelines on the Use of Armed Security Services from Private Security Companies.”
7 Østensen, “UN Use of Private Military and Security Companies,” 7.
8 International Committee of the Red Cross, “The Montreux Document on Private Military and Security Companies.”
9 Holsti, Content Analysis for the Social Sciences and Humanities, 25.
10 Von Billerbeck, “No Action without Talk”; Karlsrud, “Multiple Actors and Centres of Agency?”
11 DiMaggio and Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited”; March and Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions; Meyer and Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations.”
12 Brunsson, The Organization of Hypocrisy: Talk, Decisions, and Actions in Organizations; Weaver, Hypocrisy Trap.
13 March and Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions.
14 Brunsson, The Organization of Hypocrisy.
15 Brunsson, The Organization of Hypocrisy.
16 Lipson, “Peacekeeping,” 12.
17 Brunsson, The Organization of Hypocrisy; Brunsson, The Consequences of Decision-Making.
18 Brunsson, The Consequences of Decision-Making, 116; Lipson, “Peacekeeping.”
19 Weaver, Hypocrisy Trap, 4–5.
20 Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy.
21 Brunsson, The Organization of Hypocrisy; Brunsson, The Consequences of Decision-Making.
22 Barnett and Coleman, “Designing Police.”
23 Lipson, “Peacekeeping.”
24 Von Billerbeck, “Mirror Mirror on the Wall,” 210.
25 Lipson, “Peacekeeping.”
26 Hirschmann, “Peacebuilding in UN Peacekeeping Exit Strategies.”
27 Everett, Humanitarian Hypocrisy.
28 Egnell, “The Organised Hypocrisy of International State-Building.”
29 Weaver, Hypocrisy Trap.
30 Cusumano, “Migrant Rescue as Organized Hypocrisy”; Knill, Steinebach, and Fernández-i-Marín, “Hypocrisy as a Crisis Response?”; Lavenex, “Failing Forward’ Towards Which Europe?.”
31 Junk and Trettin, “Internal Dynamics and Dysfunctions of International Organizations.”
32 Von Billerbeck, “Mirror Mirror on the Wall”; Von Billerbeck, “No Action without Talk.”
33 Karlsrud, “Multiple Actors and Centres of Agency?”
34 Percy, Mercenaries: The History of a Norm in International Relations, 218–9.
35 Ibid., 235.
36 Ibid., 232; Percy, “The Unimplemented Norm,” 80.
37 Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns.
38 Fitzsimmons, “A Rational-Constructivist Explanation for the Evolution and Decline of the Norm against Mercenarism”; Krahmann, “The United States, PMSCs and the State Monopoly on Violence”; Panke and Petersohn, “Why International Norms Disappear Sometimes”; Panke and Petersohn, “Norm Challenges and Norm Death.”
39 Bures and Meyer, “The Anti-Mercenary Norm and United Nations’ Use of Private Military and Security Companies”; Casiraghi, “Weak, Politicized, Absent”; Liu and Kinsey, “Challenging the Strength of the Antimercenary Norm”; White, “Mercenarism, Norms and Market Exchange.”
40 Petersohn, “Reframing the Anti-Mercenary Norm.”
41 Ibid., 480–1.
42 Percy, “The Unimplemented Norm,” 240.
43 Krahmann, “The United States, PMSCs and the State Monopoly on Violence,” 65.
44 Liu and Kinsey, “Challenging the Strength of the Antimercenary Norm,” 93.
45 Percy, Mercenaries, 35.
46 Ibid., 29.
47 UN General Assembly, “Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.”
48 UN General Assembly, Definition of Aggression.
49 UN General Assembly, “Importance of the universal realization of the right of peoples to self-determination and of the speedy granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples for the effective guarantee and observance of human rights.”
50 UN Security Council, “UN Security Council Resolution 241 (1967)”; UN Security Council, “UN Security Council Resolution 405 (1977).”
51 Ballesteros, “Report on the Question of the Use of Mercenaries as a Means of Violating Human Rights and Impeding the Exercise of the Rights of Peoples to Self-Determination,” para. 68.
52 Percy, Mercenaries, 222; Bures, “Private Military Companies?”
53 Percy, Mercenaries, 239.
54 Bures, “Private Military Companies”; Østensen, “UN Use of Private Military and Security Companies.”
55 Bures and Meyer, “The Anti-Mercenary Norm and United Nations’ Use of Private Military and Security Companies”; Østensen, “UN Use of Private Military and Security Companies”; Østensen, “In the Business of Peace”; Patterson, “A Corporate Alternative to United Nations Ad Hoc Military Deployments”; Pingeot, “Dangerous Partnership - Private Military & Security Companies and the UN”; Tkach and Phillips, “UN Organizational and Financial Incentives to Employ Private Military and Security Companies in Peacekeeping Operations.”
56 Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, “Reports on the Department of Safety and Security and on the Use of Private Security.”
57 Ibid., 11–12.
58 UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries, “Use of Mercenaries as a Means of Violating Human Rights and Impeding the Exercise of the Right of Peoples to Self-Determination,” para. 11.
59 Ibid., para. 52.
60 Ibid., para. 52.
61 Ibid., para. 60.
62 Ibid., para. 61.
63 Bures and Meyer, “The Anti-Mercenary Norm and United Nations’ Use of Private Military and Security Companies.”
64 Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, “Reports on the Department of Safety and Security and on the Use of Private Security,” para. 23.
65 Østensen, “UN Use of Private Military and Security Companies,” 8–9.
66 Pingeot, “Dangerous Partnership,” 47.
67 These include the availability, professionalism, and deployment readiness of PMSCs’ personnel; better organization and equipment; and lower costs. For a detailed discussion, see Bures, “Private Military Companies”; Patterson, “A Corporate Alternative to United Nations Ad Hoc Military Deployments”; Spearin, “UN Peacekeeping and the International Private Military and Security Industry”.
68 UN Secretary-General 2012, para. 8.
69 UN Department of Safety and Security, “United Nations Security Policy Manual, Chapter IV,” para. 3.
70 UN Department of Safety and Security, “Guidelines on the Use of Armed Security Services from Private Security Companies.”
71 United Nations, “Secretary-General Reflects on ‘intervention’ in Thirty-Firth Annual Ditchley Foundation Lecture.”
72 Cited in Pingeot, “Dangerous Partnership,” 23.
73 UN General Assembly, “Outsourcing Practices - Report of the Secretary-General,” para. 4.
74 UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Guidelines for Humanitarian Organisations on Interacting with Military and Other Security Actors in Iraq,” 5.
75 Percy, Mercenaries, 224.
76 UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, “UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries.”
77 The Working Group reports are available at http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?m=152. The Special Rapporteur reports are available at http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?m=105
78 For an analysis of the Draft Conventions provisions, as well as their shortcomings, see Østensen, “UN Use of Private Military and Security Companies.”
79 Lipson, “Peacekeeping,” 22.
80 Ballesteros, “Report on the Question of the Use of Mercenaries as a Means of Violating Human Rights and Impeding the Exercise of the Rights of Peoples to Self-Determination,” para. 68.
81 United Nations Security Policy Manual, 93.
82 Tkach and Phillips, “UN Organizational and Financial Incentives to Employ Private Military and Security Companies in Peacekeeping Operations,” 115.
83 Lipson and Weaver, “Varieties of Organized Hypocrisy,” 16.
84 Bures and Meyer, “The Anti-Mercenary Norm and United Nations’ Use of Private Military and Security Companies.”
85 Cusumano, “Migrant Rescue as Organized Hypocrisy”; Lipson and Weaver, “Varieties of Organized Hypocrisy.”
86 Bures and Meyer, “The Anti-Mercenary Norm and United Nations’ Use of Private Military and Security Companies,” 91.
87 Bures and Meyer, “The Anti-Mercenary Norm and United Nations’ Use of Private Military and Security Companies”; Østensen, “UN Use of Private Military and Security Companies”; Østensen, “In the Business of Peace”; Tkach and Phillips, “UN Organizational and Financial Incentives to Employ Private Military and Security Companies in Peacekeeping Operations.”
88 Lipson, “Peacekeeping.”
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Oldrich Bures
Oldrich Bures is the founding director of the Center for Security Studies and Professor of International Political Relations at Metropolitan University Prague. He also lectures at the Department of Security Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague. His research is focused on (counter-)terrorism and privatization of security. He is the author of several monographs, including Private Security Companies: Transforming Politics and Security in the Czech Republic (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), and co-editor of several edited volumes, including Security Privatization: How Non-security-related Private Businesses Shape Security Governance (Springer 2018). For a full list of publications, see https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Oldrich_Bures.
Eugenio Cusumano
Eugenio Cusumano is assistant professor of International Relations at the University of Leiden and Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute. His research, focusing on non-state actors’ role in international crisis management, has been published in journals including Security Dialogue, The Journal of Strategic Studies, and Cooperation and Conflict as well as books by Oxford and Stanford University Press, Routledge, and Palgrave Macmillan. He has collaborated with the NATO Centre of Excellence on Civil-Military Cooperation and the EU Centre of Excellence on Hybrid Threats, and obtained research grants from the European Commission, the Fulbright-Schuman programme, the European University Institute, and the Gerda Henkel Foundation.