AN OPEN CALL TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY ## Regarding State Sovereignty, the Arms Trade, and the Illegality of Providing Heavy Weaponry to Private CompaniesHonorable Heads of State,Honorable Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs,Honorable Defense Industry and Export Authorities,Honorable Judges of the International Court of Justice,Honorable Representatives of the United Nations and relevant international organizations,The production, transfer, and use of heavy weaponry is not merely a commercial activity. This domain lies directly at the heart of state sovereignty, international peace, and the common security of humanity. Despite this, a highly dangerous practice has emerged today, revolving around fighter jets, tanks, heavy artillery systems, highly destructive missiles, and armored units, operated through private companies, “private military contractors,” and front commercial structures.In this practice, three actors that should be fundamentally distinct are deliberately and intentionally conflated:

1. Private arms manufacturing companies (the manufacturing industry),
2. Sovereign states and official armed forces procuring weapons (the end-user),
3. Private companies, private military companies (PMCs), and front structures attempting to procure weapons (the broker, supplier, proxy army).
   The distinction between these three roles is extremely clear both logically and legally. However, certain states and companies, when it suits their interests, ignore and distort this distinction, establishing mechanisms that appear legally compliant on paper but yield the exact opposite results on the ground.
   Hereby, I pose open and clear questions to the international community, especially to states that manufacture and export heavy weapons:

• How is it that you provide heavy weaponry to a private company?
• When delivering tanks, artillery, missiles, attack helicopters, and heavy armored vehicles to these companies, do you not ask, “Who are you? On whose behalf are you requesting these weapons?”
• Under what legal understanding do you de facto delegate the authority to “use lethal force”—the very core of state sovereignty—to profit-driven companies?
  The current picture reveals a chain of joint responsibility:
• The private company procuring the weapons is culpable. Any private entity that, without acting on behalf of a sovereign state, attempts to acquire, stockpile, and transfer heavy weaponry as a commercial legal entity falls, by definition, into the realm of arms trafficking and the usurpation of sovereignty.
• The private manufacturing companies supplying the weapons are also responsible. Manufacturers who knowingly conceal the identity of the end-user or direct weapons to non-state actors through false or misleading declarations cannot escape responsibility by claiming, “We are merely manufacturers; we are just doing business.”
• The states and governments that authorize these shipments are also responsible. Governments that approve export licenses and sign end-user certificates, yet turn a blind eye to the deployment of weapons into the field via private military companies and proxy structures, are complicit in human rights violations, war crimes, and arms trafficking.
  In this context, it is imperative that states with a large share in the arms industry, pioneers in defense exports, and those providing broad operational space to private military companies—particularly the Government and Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom—honestly interrogate their own roles. The same question applies to the United States, Russia, and other major arms-exporting states:

While deeming sovereign authority inalienable, why do you de facto delegate the authority to use heavy weapons to private military companies?
Do you apply international law only on paper, or do you have the courage to take the actual user on the ground into account?

At this point, three fundamental principles must be clearly established:

I. State Sovereignty and the Monopoly on Violence

The authority to use lethal violence via heavy weaponry belongs exclusively to the sovereign state and its official armed forces. This authority includes:

• Declaring war,
• Conducting armed operations,
• Making the decision to use lethal force,
  and is inalienable. The moment a state begins to de facto relinquish this authority to a private company, it fragments its sovereignty and shares it with a corporation. This contradicts both public law theory and the spirit of international law.

II. The Distinction Between the Three Actors: Manufacturer – State – Company

1. Manufacturing Companies: These are private companies that design and produce systems such as tanks, armored vehicles, missiles, air defense systems, attack helicopters, UAVs, etc. Their role is solely to sell to authorized state institutions in compliance with national and international export control regimes. A manufacturer that knowingly conceals or misrepresents the ultimate end-user ceases to be an industrial actor and becomes part of a criminal chain.
2. State / Official Armed Forces (End-User): The sovereign actor that registers heavy weaponry into its inventory, trains its personnel, and actually uses them. It is the locus of responsibility regarding international humanitarian law and human rights. A state does not have the right to say, “I bought this weapon but let a private company use it, I am not involved”; any entity acting de facto on behalf of the state ultimately falls within the state’s sphere of responsibility.
3. Private Companies / Private Military Companies (PMCs, Proxy Structures) Attempting to Procure Weapons: This text does not target the carrying of light weapons within the scope of private security, but specifically the acquisition, stockpiling, and use of heavy weaponry (tanks, artillery, missiles, attack helicopters, heavy armored vehicles, etc.) by private companies.

• The attempt by a private company to acquire such heavy weapons for its own inventory,
• Assuming the role of a “de facto buyer” or “proxy user” on behalf of another state’s army or armed group,
  constitutes, by definition, arms trafficking, illicit procurement, and the usurpation of sovereign authority.

III. Private Military Companies and Proxy Warfare Models

Examples like Blackwater/Academi and Wagner have exposed the following dirty model:

• In official records, these structures appear as “private security/service firms”;
• On the ground, however, they fight essentially as proxy armies using heavy weaponry.
  In this model:
• The manufacturer sells the heavy weapon to a state on paper.
• The state registers this weapon in its inventory but allocates it to the private military company in the field.
• The actual user—the one pulling the trigger, launching the raid, planning the attack—becomes the private company.
  Thus:
• The state attempts to dilute its political and legal responsibility by claiming, “That company did it.”
• The manufacturer ignores the actual user, claiming, “I sold it to the state.”
• The private company transforms into an intermediate, hybrid actor that has state backing but evades official responsibility.
  This structure systematically breaches international arms trade regimes, human rights standards, and the laws of war on the ground, while pretending to uphold them on paper.

IV. Normative Demand: The Necessary Legal and Moral Threshold

The fact that a de facto practice—proxy wars waged through private military companies—is widespread today does not mean it is legitimate. The position articulated here points not to “what is,” but to the legal and moral standard that ought to be.
In this framework, our concrete call to the international community is as follows:

1. Explicit Recognition of the End-User Principle in Heavy Weaponry: The ultimate end-users of heavy weaponry must exclusively be sovereign states and their official armed forces. Recognizing private individuals and companies as “end-users” or “buyers” in this category must be deemed expressly illegal.
2. Prohibition of Providing Heavy Weaponry to Private Companies: Private military companies and commercial entities must be subject to strict prohibitions that prevent them from directly possessing, acquiring, and transferring systems such as tanks, artillery, missiles, attack helicopters, heavy armored vehicles, multiple rocket launchers, and similar systems in their inventories.
3. Joint Recognition of State-Corporate Responsibility: If a private company cannot acquire heavy weaponry without the licenses and permissions granted by a state, then the state providing access to these weapons, alongside the manufacturing company, is responsible for the outcome. No link in this chain should be able to evade responsibility by claiming, “I didn’t know, I just signed the paper.”
4. Requirement of Alignment Between End-User and Actual User: In the international arms trade, the true “end-user” is not the name on the document, but the one pulling the trigger on the ground. Any discrepancy between the institution declared in the end-user certificate and the actual user must constitute immediate grounds for investigation and sanctions; models that list a state army on paper but employ a private army on the ground must be expressly banned.
5. Self-Interrogation by Major Exporting States: Countries with strong defense industries, especially the United Kingdom, must comprehensively investigate the roles of manufacturers and private military companies based on their soil in the shipment of heavy weaponry to third countries, and must not hide behind the defense of “we granted the license, we don’t know the rest.” The state issuing the license must bear its share of responsibility for any grave violations that occur.

Conclusion

State sovereignty cannot be subcontracted to companies.
The authority to wage war cannot be the subject of a commercial service contract.
Heavy weaponry cannot be reduced to a mundane item in a “client portfolio.”
I invite the international community, primarily weapon-manufacturing and exporting states and their defense ministries, to face these realities. I call upon you to legally, politically, and morally reject the provision of heavy weaponry to private companies, the proxy war models waged through these companies, and the de facto privatization of sovereign authority.
If this line is not drawn clearly today, every new conflict will be billed to humanity as more war crimes, greater civilian casualties, and deeper global insecurity.