Statement by the Delegation of the United States of America
Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group on
Private Military and Security Companies, August 13-17, 2012
Statement on Adoption of the Report and its Conclusions and Recommendations
Thank you Mr. President. The United States would like to extend our deep thanks to you for your leadership and to all other delegations for the constructive and consensual spirit that has characterized this session. We hope it is a spirit we can all build on as we take our work forward. As we said at the outset of this session, we believe an approach that brings together home states, territorial states, and contracting states as well as experts and other stakeholders to make progress in step-by-step fashion on promoting and protecting human rights in the context of the activities of PSCs and PMCs is well worth pursuing and we are pleased to join consensus on these conclusions and recommendations in the hope that today we have taken the first step down that road, recognizing that we will need to continue to work together to avoid possible divisions.
We think it would be valuable to continue discussing specific approaches different states have taken, for instance with regard to licensing and export, and we are pleased that we will have an opportunity to do so. We are also pleased to continue to have the opportunity to discuss the differences between the activities of PSCs and PMCs and to discuss accountability, which could include domestic measures as well as, for instance, law enforcement cooperation or capacity building.
As we have said, we think that what is needed is not new international law but better implementation of existing international law; but also improvements in law, regulation and policy at the national level, and we hope the continuing discussion in the IGWG can be a vehicle for facilitating that kind of enhancement of domestic standards.
We would also like to express our thanks to the experts who participated in this session and enriched the debate considerably. We hope that this richness can continue to characterize our discussions going forward of the varied challenges posed by the activities of PSCs and PMCs and the various possibilities for addressing them.
Again, thank you very much Mr. President.