Abstract

The legal debate on the outsourcing of private security tasks has focused on whether contractors operate in a legal vacuum. As states increasingly contract private security providers to perform functions previously exercised by members of the regular armed forces, a fundamental question has become to what extent these commercial entities are subject to the same legal framework as the armed forces. This chapter assesses whether and how the existing legal norms regulating the armed forces, at both international and domestic level, can be effectively applied to the private security industry or whether they need to be supplemented with new norms.