Abstract
Autore:
Mannini Mario
Titolo:
"Nuovi mercenari in Africa: la privatizzazione della guerra e della sicurezza"
The strong renewal of activity among mercenary troops, registered in recent years in the form of truly private armies, which are very different from the type of mercenary troops present until fairly recently, should be seen within the context of an widespread tendency towards the privatization of services that were once strictly the prerogative of states and towards a generalized world-scale decrease in the number of effective, which frees up the market in human resources for those with various degrees of specialization in search of a new occupation.
The mercenary armies today take the form of limited companies that are part of holdings which control many other activities. This phenomenon is new even to the Africa, despite its long and tragic experience involving the use of mercenary troops. This continent provides fertile territory for the new phenomenon, owing to the two widespread and strictly correlated factors of fragility of the state and political instability. The tendency towards the privatization of security services is the subject of allarmed reports by the United Nations personnel responsible for investigating the use of mercenary troops, who fear a revolution in the nature of international relations based on state sovereignty, with additional negative consequences for the problem of disarmament. Overall, however, the problem seems to be underestimated by the international community. The prevailing tendency among observers is a sense of inevitability which takes account of the situation and aims to regulate the phenomenon of private armies in the context of international law.
