In recent years, states around the world have loosened their claim to a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence, instead ceding increasing numbers of military, police, and security duties to the private sector...While most of the world’s leading PMSCs are based in the Global North, much of the work they are hired to do—either on the battlefield or the oilfield—takes place in the Global South. Increasingly, that work is also being carried out by recruits from Latin America, Africa, and Asia...The purpose of this conference is to bring together both scholarly and non-scholarly experts on PMSCs...in order to develop a research network on PMSCs and their implications for human rights and human security.......[refers to the Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries as a Means of Violating Human Rights and Impeding the Exercise of the Rights of People to Self-Determination] [also refers to Blackwater]