The recent increasing use of mercenaries in armed conflicts such as in Libya, Central African Republic, Nagorno-Karabakh, Mali, and Ukraine has focused attention on some of the problems arising from the deployment of these private and quasi-private actors. Their involvement in proxy wars, predatory recruitment, and asymmetric warfare, which internationalise, exacerbate, and prolong armed conflicts, creates space for grave human rights abuses and war crimes. Millions of people are directly negatively impacted by mercenaries globally, but accountability is rare, and so these actors operate with impunity, their victims denied access to justice and redress. In essence, mercenaries operate in an accountability void. Academic attention until now has focused on the anti-mercenary norm, definitions of mercenary, and treatment of mercenaries, but there is little research on how accountability and remedy is ensured for victims of mercenarism.
MERCURY is 5-year project funded by the European Research Council, focusing on this accountability void, combining cutting-edge, data-driven mapping and analysis of mercenary operations with legal and qualitative analysis. The mapping will provide a novel understanding of mercenaries to underpin legal analysis of the shortcomings and weaknesses of national and international frameworks when it comes to remedies for victims. Via legal and qualitative analysis, MERCURY will evaluate routes to accountability and remedy via international and national human rights courts, tribunals, mechanisms, and transitional justice processes, and propose potential pathways to justice for victims.
As part of the mapping phase MERCURY PI Dr Sorcha MacLeod will present a country case study: 'Domestic Implementation of the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries: Ukraine Case Study’, while postdoctoral researcher Dr Salome Addo Ravn will present on the 'Human Rights Implications of the Legislative Framework against Mercenaries in Africa: Gaps and Challenges, and Prospects for Viable Interventions'.
DR SORCHA MACLEOD – BIOGRAPHY
Dr Sorcha MacLeod is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen. She is an expert in international human rights law with a particular focus on mercenaries and private military and security companies (PMSC), and she has published widely on this topic. In 2023 she was awarded a 5-year €2M European Research Council Consolidator Grant for her project MERCURY, on the accountability of mercenaries and related actors for human rights violations. Between 2018-24 she served on the UN Special Procedures’ Working Group on the use of mercenaries as an independent human rights expert. She holds a PhD from the University of Glasgow, and LLM in international natural resources law and policy and LLB(Hons) from the University of Dundee, and is a former Marie Skłodowska Curie Individual Fellow. Sorcha participated in the development of the Montreux Document on PMSC, as well as the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Providers. She sits on the International Code of Conduct Association’s (ICoCA) Expert Advisory Group on Responsible Security and has been involved in the drafting of international management standards PSC.1 and ISO 18788 for private security operations. Sorcha is a Visiting Fellow at DCAF – Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance, a trustee of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, and Chair of the Working Group on Atrocity Crimes and Money Laundering for the Global Coalition to Fight Financial Crime. She has advised governments, civil society organisations, intergovernmental organisations, and industry on human rights and security issues.
Email: sorcha.macleod@jur.ku.dk
Webpage: https://jura.ku.dk/privategovernance/english/staff/?pure=en/persons/664378
MERCURY project: https://jura.ku.dk/privategovernance/english/research/mercury/
Dr Salome Addo Ravn - Biography
Salome Addo Ravn is a Post-doctoral researcher on the ERC project, MERCURY at the Centre for Private Governance at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of the legislative framework governing mercenaries in Africa, with a particularly focus on accountability for human rights violations linked to mercenaries and facilitating redress for victims. She holds a PhD from the University of Copenhagen for her thesis: Assessing the Evolving Authority of the African Human Rights System: A Case Study of Tanzania. Prior to her academic career, Salome practiced law as a member of the Ghana Bar Association. Her research interests encompass international law, international humanitarian law, and human rights at both the global and regional levels, with a particular focus on the African human rights system.
Email: salome.addo.ravn@jur.ku.dk
Webpage: https://researchprofiles.ku.dk/en/persons/salome-addo-ravn
MERCURY project: https://jura.ku.dk/privategovernance/english/research/mercury/