A/HRC/7/7 page 19 personnel opened fire unprovoked. The Iraqi Ministry of Interior, in a preliminary report, shares this view. Iraq’s Prime Minister and Interior Ministry announced that it would reassess all PMSCs operating in the country and the freezing of the activities of Blackwater in Iraq.65 47. The preliminary results of a peace research institute study on how PMSCs are perceived by the local population in Afghanistan (and Angola), indicate that employees of PMSCs may contribute to insecurity by perpetuating a “culture of war”, and raise concerns as to the lack of transparency blurring responsibility and accountability of PMSCs and their employees. The local population in Afghanistan also appears to consider that PMSCs are diverting needed funds for reconstruction to pay private security companies, which thus paradoxically may in effect prevent the stabilization of peace in the country.66 It notes that among the PMSC contractors there are South Africans now training and providing support to the Iraqi police who served earlier in the South African police and army during the former apartheid regime, some of whom have committed crimes against humanity.67 48. There are differing accounts as to whether commercialization of PMSCs brings more efficiency,68 but the privatization of the use of force without accountability and oversight leads inexorably to impunity. Outsourcing, contracting and hiring PMSCs may be attempts to evade direct legal responsibilities, and in some cases, as for the United States of America, an element of its foreign policy. The Working Group considers that security is a universal human right for all and considers that States relinquish their responsibilities when security becomes a privilege only available to those who can afford it.69 49. The international community should be concerned about the impacts of the activities of PMSCs affecting matters of peace and the enjoyment of human rights in low-intensity armed conflicts and post-conflict situations, since the conduct of PMSCs is rather governed by profit interests than by compliance with international norms. According to some commentators, 65 See Joshua Partlow, “State Depart. Convoy Attacked in Baghdad, Sparking a Shooting”, Washington Post, 17 September 2007; “The real story of Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday”, The Independent , 21 September 2007. 66 Swisspeace, supra. 67 A/HRC/4/42, para. 33. 68 The United States Army would have recognized that two overlapping contracts to protect its Corps of Engineers in Iraq by a private army equivalent to three military battalions were costing millions of dollars in duplicate, Steve Fainaru, “Security Costs Soaring”, Washington Post, 12 August 2007. 69 Sami Makki, “Sociétés militaires privées dans le chaos irakien”, Le Monde diplomatique, novembre 2004.