I found this Bloomberg article on Fijian mercenaries very interesting from a trade perspective:
Since the 1970s, this impoverished and remote remnant of the British Empire has positioned itself as a discount-soldier surplus store. Its best customer has been the United Nations' peacekeeping operations. Today, on the post-Sept. 11 battlefield, Fiji is marketing for hire its 3,500 active soldiers, 15,000 reservists and more than 20,000 unemployed former troops.
"Private armies became a viable commercial enterprise the moment America invaded Iraq," said Sakiusa Raivoce, a retired Fijian colonel and director of Security Support, the biggest of the country's six mercenary employment agencies. "The time is right, and our price is right."
...
"We made a conscious decision to create an army bigger than we need to generate foreign currency," said Lieutenant Colonel Mosese Tikoitoga, 46, senior officer and private army sales liaison in the junta led by Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama, a former UN peacekeeper.
"Our economy has no choice but to build armies, and it's a good business. There are few other foreign investments. If we didn't do this, our people would be in the street creating havoc."
...
Those wages from returning soldiers, money from the UN for leasing peacekeepers - an estimated $300 million over almost 30 years - and fees from private security firms that hire active soldiers have helped the anemic economy, according to junta leaders.
Pulling a pen from the pocket of a lime-green shirt embroidered with banyan leaves, Tikoitoga makes some quick calculations:
Since 1978, Fiji has outsourced more than 25,000 troops to the UN, the British Army and independent mercenary contractors. In 2003, the mercenaries brought home about $9 million in wages.
Are mercenary services covered by the GATS? The provisional UN CPC does have a category for investigation and security services, and it might fall somewhere there. See http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cr/registry/regcs.asp?Cl=9&Lg=1&Co=8730 If so, is it possible that any Member made commitments in this area, intentionally or otherwise? Perhaps Fiji's trade officials should look into this, if they have not already.
(For those who follow these things, the "trade in everything" title is a take off on Tyler Cowen's frequent "markets in everything" posts at Marginal Revolution)
