The U.S. government has military bases and outposts around the world and, as in the United States, uses contractors to support its mission abroad. Given that the military and personnel of state contractors are necessarily abroad, questions arise as to how and what laws of the host country apply. This uncertainty is often resolved by bilateral (or multilateral) agreements between the host country and the United States, known as the Status of the Armed Forces Agreements (SOFA). An agreement on visiting forces resembles an agreement on the status of the armed forces, with the exception of the first, which only temporarily covers intervention forces in a country that does not reside there. The political issue of SOFA is complicated by the fact that many host countries have mixed feelings about foreign bases on their soil and that SOFA renegotiation requests are often linked to calls for a total withdrawal of foreign troops. Issues of different national practices may arise – while the United States and host countries in general agree on what constitutes a crime, many American observers believe that the host country`s judicial systems offer much lower protection than the United States and that the host country`s courts may be under pressure from the public to be found guilty; In addition, U.S. service members who are invited to send shipments abroad should not be forced to waive their rights under the Rights Act. On the other hand, observers of the host country who do not have a local equivalent of the law of rights often feel that these are irrelevant excuses for special treatment and resemble the extraterritorial agreements demanded by Western countries during colonialism. A host country where such sentiment is widespread, South Korea, itself has forces in Kyrgyzstan and has negotiated a SOFA that gives its members total immunity from prosecution by the Kyrgyz authorities for any crime, which goes far beyond the privileges that many South Koreans enter into their country`s couch with the United States. [11] SOFAs perform a number of functions. First, they define the legal status of U.S.

Department of Defense (DoD) personnel and support governments for their activities and assets in another nation. Second, they define rights and responsibilities between the United States and the host country government. For staff, SOFAs can dictate all aspects of staff life while in the host country. Agreements on sofas may cover, for example, the status, entry and exit of the host country, military training on the territory of the host country, justice, law enforcement, taxes, import and export laws, driving privileges, employment, school education, housing, etc. In general, the protection of sofas applies to civilian staff of defence companies and other organisations providing services in the host country and their relatives, beyond uniformed service members in the host country.