Accountability Gap of Private Military Companies: A Multi-Level Responsibility Mode
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.38035/jlph.v6i6.3744Keywords:
Private Military Companies, Accountability Gap, Corporate Due Diligence, State Responsibility, Command ResponsibilityAbstract
The proliferation of Private Military Companies (PMCs) in contemporary armed conflict has produced an accountability vacuum that the existing international legal architecture struggles to address. This article argues that the gap is structural, arising from three interlocking deficiencies: a personality gap (PMCs correspond to no recognized category of international legal subject), a jurisdictional gap (international criminal law excludes corporate entities from its personal jurisdiction), and a contractual gap (status-of-forces and procurement arrangements neutralize host-state jurisdiction). Using a normative-prescriptive method integrating statutory, case-based, and conceptual analysis, the study examines four representative cases Blackwater at Nisour Square, Al-Shimari v. CACI, Executive Outcomes, and the Wagner Group to show how each dimension operates in practice. It then advances a multi-level responsibility model integrating state responsibility under the respect–protect–fulfil doctrine and heightened due diligence, individual criminal responsibility under Article 28(b) of the Rome Statute, and binding corporate due diligence operationalized through procurement contracts. The framework relies entirely on existing international legal materials and requires no new treaty-making. The principal finding is that the accountability gap, though structural, is addressable through the integrated deployment of normative resources already present within the international legal order. The novelty of this study lies in its integration of three previously siloed strands of PMC accountability scholarship like the doctrine of international legal personality, the jurisdictional architecture of international criminal law, and the due diligence framework of business and human rights law, into a single multi-level responsibility model derived entirely from existing international legal materials, with an original extension of that model to the Indonesian domestic legal order.
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