RELATED LINKS » Have your say » Subscribe to Archivestuff

Mercenaries can offer humanitarian protection, MPs told

The foreign affairs, defence and trade select committee is considering submissions on the Mercenary Activities (Prohibition) Bill.

It will make it an offence for anyone to recruit, use, finance or train mercenaries – with those offences also punishable by jail terms of up to 14 years.

Passing the bill would be contrary to the national interest, Waikato University international relations and security studies director Ron Smith told the MPs.

"Before passing the bill, Parliament ought to seriously consider the basis of present anti-mercenary prejudice and particularly the services that private military companies might provide in the modern world," he said.

"Suitably regulated and appropriately used, mercenaries might offer timely humanitarian protection and security in cases where individual states or the United Nations. . . cannot act."

One purpose of passing the bill was to allow New Zealand to fulfil its obligations under the Mercenaries Convention.

So far none of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – had ratified the convention, Dr Smith said.

Nor had Australia, Canada, India, Japan and Germany ratified it.

Among the countries which had signed were Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Georgia, Guinea, Libya, Mali, Togo, Saudi Arabia, Uruguay and Uzbekistan, Dr Smith said.

"It is not immediately evident why it is the company we should seek," he said.

Definitions in the legislation of the term mercenary were so complex "as to present insuperable problems in its application".

There was no agreed definition of the term, he said.

A mercenary is someone who is recruited to fight in an armed conflict or take part in a concerted act of violence for private gain.

Though the convention was aimed at private military forces, New Zealand troops in Vietnam had been categorised by the Viet Cong as mercenaries, Dr Smith said.

The Government has said by becoming a party to the convention, New Zealand would be able to demonstrate it considered the recruitment and use of mercenaries to be "unacceptable as a method of conflict resolution".