RESpECT · Public Actions, Private Rules at the Margins: Ensuring Respect for Human Rights by Private Security Companies
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2019-10-01 → 2022-09-30
- EU contribution
- €328,968
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
RESpECT - Public Actions, Private Rules at the Margins: Ensuring Respect for Human Rights by Private Security Companies
The overall objective of RESpECT was to assess the effectiveness of current international and national regulatory and policy frameworks that deal with human rights violations by Private Military and Security Companies (PMSC) against marginalised groups, including women, children, migrants, racialised persons, persons with disabilities, and LGBTI+ persons. The aim was to produce insights to help policy makers, governments, regulators, the private security industry and its auditors, and civil society actors to understand and improve public and private regulatory frameworks for international PMSC with the aim of securing tangible benefits for those vulnerable and marginalised groups worst affected. PMSC have a bad reputation when it comes to respecting human rights. Efforts to develop a soft multistakeholder regulatory framework emerged in 2008 and resulted in the Montreux Document, and in 2010 the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Providers (ICoC). Since then, the market for PMSC has changed and developed significantly. These two factors, an implemented, regulatory framework for PMSC combined with a changing market, made an examination of the regulatory effectiveness in ensuring that PMSC respect and comply with international human rights standards very timely and required. RESpECT engaged normative, empirical, and analytical techniques: (1) To critically assess the human rights elements of the International Code of Conduct (ICoC) and its multistakeholder oversight body, the International Code of Conduct Association (ICoCA), which has developed monitoring, certification, and complaints mechanisms. (2) To critically analyse selected national legislative and policy initiatives designed to address PMSC-related human rights violations with critical attention being paid to the adoption of and the interrelation between public and private regulatory techniques and remedies, especially legal liabilities and enforcement mechanisms. (3) To determine how, in particular, marginalised groups are impacted by PMSC-related human rights violations and to assess the effectiveness of selected international/national and public/private regulatory frameworks. While some progress has been made in the regulation of PMSC, the research undertaken during the RESpECT project identified substantial gaps in the effectiveness of legal and policy frameworks, especially with regard to persons in vulnerable situations including women, migrants, racialised persons, persons with disabilities, and LGBTI+ persons. It further identified gaps in labour standards for private security personnel. RESpECT also determined that the Covid19 pandemic exacerbated and amplified existing human rights concerns around PMSC that the regulatory frameworks have been unable to address effectively.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Private Security Companies (PSCs) have a bad reputation, with well-known allegations of human rights abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan and in other conflict zones. The International Code of Conduct for Private Security Providers, created to deal with these problems, merges public and private governance by using auditing to measure human rights compliance by PSCs. Nationally, States responded via public and private legislative and policy options to regulate PSCs operating in conflict zones including licensing, authorisation and contracts. However, there is a major problem with these regulatory regimes. The international market for security is expanding due to increased privatisation and outsourcing of public functions and services. PSCs are now offering international security services that are: (a) often in non-conflict zones; and (b) in areas that have been traditionally within the sole domain of the State e.g. prisons, immigration detention centres. Thus the current regulatory regime does not fit current needs. It is not known or understood how effective these private governance approaches can be in ensuring public roles, in this case, safeguarding human rights for marginalised groups, in particular women, children and migrants. The objective of RESpECT is to assess the perceptions, understanding and effectiveness of current international and national regulatory and policy frameworks that deal with PSC-related human rights violations against marginalised groups, using desk-top normative analysis and social research methods to gather empirical data to provide new insights into the area. These insights in turn will generate outputs and alternative regulatory models to help policymakers, governments, PSCs, auditors, and civil society actors to understand and improve public and private regulatory frameworks for international PSCs with the aim of securing tangible benefits for those vulnerable and marginalised groups worst affected – women, children and migrants.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET · KOBENHAVNCoordinatorDenmark
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union