Business and security sector reform: the case for corporate security responsibility

Abstract

Companies make a significant contribution to creating jobs and generating economic growth, raising living standards and helping to lift people out of poverty. Most businesses manage in a responsible way their different roles in society – as producer, employer, marketer, customer, taxpayer and neighbour.1 Nonetheless, businesses are also sometimes associated with or linked to human rights violations – even if unwittingly. Many of the most serious abuses related to corporate operations occur in weak governance areas in relation to extractive industries – oil, mining and gas. Typically, such instances of abuse involve at some point the presence of security actors – public, private or non-statutory – given the importance of extractives to the political economy of natural-resource-rich countries. Many complaints against the extractive industries refer in fact to the conduct of government security personnel allegedly using inappropriate force in the name of protecting company staff or facilities.