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Rh steps into that fold. We are also aware of the Turkish-headquartered SADAT increasing its presence across the continent of Africa. It has been operating since at least 2013, including in Libya and Sudan.

76. The UK Government does not wish to disincentivise the use of PMCs in general, as their activity as “not necessarily illegal or harmful”. Other contributors emphasised the need to recognise that such companies can make a positive contribution to security. However, the Government recognised that the “malign use of PMCs as proxies of States increasingly forms part of an intensified competition over norms and values”. The Government appears to think it can manage these risks. We disagree. The Ministry of Defence has a “policy framework to understand where and how the use and activities of PMCs threatens UK interests and values”. As the Government has not provided this to us, however, we do not know which PMCs it considers a threat or why, nor are we aware of what the Government does with this information. Overall, we perceived the coordination of analysis across Government to be poor.

77. The Government has underlined that the rules of international law governing state relations with PMCs are “well-established”. If true, this would make it considerably easier to challenge states whose malign use of PMCs falls foul of these rules. However, other evidence disputes the clarity of international rules. There is no widely agreed international legal definition of a Private Military Company, and there are ambiguities over the status of PMC employees under international humanitarian law. We were also told that the legal tests to meet the term ‘mercenary’ are “near impossible” to fulfil, due to