A/HRC/4/42 page 14 of protection.17 The PMSC, in its defence, argued that the guards were conducting ordinary military tasks, and sought for the case to be dismissed. The federal Court of Appeals of North Carolina, United States, decided in August 2006 that it was competent in the process brought by the family against the PMSC. 38. The Working Group notes that PMSCs are using two main arguments to promote their activities in countries of violent conflict, such as Iraq: efficiency and professionalism. Notwithstanding a principal concern of the Working Group whether PMSCs adequately take into account the norms of international human rights, international humanitarian law and public international law regulating the use of force, the argument of “efficiency” appears to be a myth. For example, in 2005, in a United States State Department programme which handles the protection of persons and operates worldwide, the Worldwide Personal Protective Services (WPPS), a PMSC attempted to improve its profits by presenting different departments of the same PMSC as if they constituted different companies. The WPPS contract obtained in 2004 would have been shared between the different entities with the effect of an inexplicable discrepancy of roughly US$ 100 million above the figure fixed in the obtained contract, unless discovered and halted by an intervention by the authorities.18 As to the argument of “professionalism”, it is correct that many PMSCs are employing ex-generals, former ministers and high-level civil servants and that a large number of them are managed by ex-military personnel from military schools.19 However, and regardless of the level of ethics in their performance, efficiency and professionalism, the Working Group considers that their activities are carried out without legitimacy.20 B. Central Asia and Eastern Europe 39. The Working Group welcomes the fact that the Republic of Moldova has acceded to the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries, and notes that 7 out of 12 States of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have acceded to the International Convention. 40. In 2006, the Model Law “On counteracting mercenarism”, adopted in November 2005 by the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS-IPA), was officially circulated by CIS-IPA with the recommendation to CIS member States to elaborate and 17 Louis Hamsen, “Families sue Blackwater over deaths in Fallujah”, The Virginia Pilot, 6 January 2005, www.corpwatch.org; Jeremy Scahill, “Blood is thicker than Blackwater”, The Nation, 1 May 2006. 18 Jeremy Scahill, “Blackwater’s mercenary jackpot”, The Nation, 16 August 2006, www.alertnet.org. 19 20 See “Corporate mercenaries”, War on Want report, London, 2006. Christian Olsson, “Vrai procès et faux débats: perspectives critiques sue les argumentaires de légitimation des entreprises de coercition para-privés”, Cultures et Conflits, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2004.