Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

Credibility Adv. – Uniqueness – Human Rights

Human rights review coming now – Opportunity for human rights leadership but PMC’s deck credibility
Fisher 10 (William April 27 http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/154-general/49006-us-to-face-litany-of-complaints-at-un-human-rights-council.html TBC 6/25/10)

Human rights groups are telling the United Nations that the United States is failing to hold corporations, including private government contractors, accountable for human rights abuses ranging from human trafficking to murder. These and a plethora of other charges have been triggered by the U.N.'s formal process known as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) for reviewing the human rights records of 192 U.N. member states by the U.N. Human Rights Council, scheduled for November, when the U.S. human rights performance will be reviewed for the first time. The UPR was established when the Human Rights Council was created in 2006 by the U.N. General Assembly. Numerous human rights groups have responded to the U.S. State Department's invitation to members of the U.S. public to present their concerns about human rights in the U.S. Chip Pitts, president of the Bill of Rights Defence Committee, has attended the predecessor U.N. Commission on Human Rights and now the Council for more than two decades, as a delegate of the U.S. government, Amnesty International, or other NGOs. "The Universal Periodic Review process is a welcome step forward, in that it subjects all states to regular review of their human rights records, in addition to the work done by other mechanisms such as the treaty bodies and special rapporteurs, as well as the Council's own retained ability to make recommendations regarding acute situations of gross and systematic violations," he told IPS. The problem, he said, is that "the process is far too slow, too limited in scope and authority, and still suffers from the inevitable politics that must be diminished if human rights implementation on the ground is to advance." "The U.S. government, in particular, should be the first to offer leadership and ensure authentic and full compliance with human rights law. But instead of setting this example, the United States all too often continues to seek refuge for itself and its allies in double standards," he added.

Credibility Adv. – I/L – Human Rights

Lack of legal clarity devastates perception of human rights and hostages

Singer 4 (Peter W, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings, http://www.dcaf.ch/_docs/pp04_private–military.pdf, AD: 6/22/10) jl

Thus, the industry and its use has moved faster than what the legal side has been able to keep pace with. This creates a worrisome phenomenon, both for contractors and the broader public good. On the contractor side, the lack of clarity means that if they are captured, it is up to their adversaries to define their status. An illustrative example is the case of the three American employees of California Microwave Systems, whose plane crashed in rebel held territory in Colombia. These three PMFers have since been held for more than 18 months, with their Geneva rights as POWs not upheld by the rebels or their own U.S. government clients.

Insufficient screenings at PMFs means their soldiers are more likely to commit human rights violations

Singer 4 (Peter W, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings, http://www.dcaf.ch/_docs/pp04_private–military.pdf, AD: 6/22/10) jl

On the human rights side, the vast majority of PMF employees are honourable men and women. However, many firms have had minimal or insufficient screening – or none at all – hiring individuals with questionable backgrounds that proved embarrassing and/or worrisome, not just for the firm, but for the wider public mission. Darker examples in Iraq range from one firm hiring an ex-British Army soldier who had earlier been jailed for having worked with Irish terrorists to another firm bringing in an ex-South African Apartheid soldiers, including one who had admitted to firebombing the houses of over 60 political activists back home.
Iraq scandal proves

Singer 4 (Peter W, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings, http://www.dcaf.ch/_docs/pp04_private–military.pdf, AD: 6/22/10) jl

Where once this highly secretive industry was little known or heard of, a series of recent events have dragged it into the public limelight. These events range from controversy over the role of military contractors in the Iraq war to allegations of a bizarre ‘rent a coup’ scandal that spans from Equatorial Guinea to the United Kingdom.
PMC’s are more likely to violate human rights – they aren’t subject to the same legal processes.
Thurer and Maclaren 7 (DANIEL THÜRER & MALCOLM MACLAREN* Military Outsourcing as a Case Study in the Accountability and Responsibility of Power”, The Law of International Relations - Liber Amicorum Hanspeter Neuhold, p 353, http://www.ivr.uzh.ch/lstthuerer/forschung/FSNeuholdt.pdf)KM

raises risk of violations of rights under (inter-)national law. The application of force can have grave consequences for human life, security, and liberty. Contractors, like public authorities, are in a position to drastically infringe the rights of individuals and to exact bodily harm. However, the murkiness of PMC’s’ legal position (see Section 4) allows PMC’s and their state employers to escape the strictures on human rights and humanitarian law, i.e. to operate beyond the control exerted by training and sanction that these bodies of law foresee. This is not to say that PMC’s necessarily engage in misconduct more often than their public counterparts, just that the likelihood of misconduct (and impunity) is greater given that PMC’s are to a large extent not bound by the same strictures.19