The Voluntary Principles for Security and Human Rights were unveiled in December 2000 by the US State Department and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom, after a yearlong process involving government officials, oil and mining companies, and NGOs. The Principles provide guidance to companies operating in zones of conflict or fragile states so that they can ensure that security forces – public or private – protecting the companies’ facilities and premises operate in a way that protects the company’s assets while respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms. Such an initiative was necessary because of widespread international concern over the way security forces operated while protecting oil and mining installations in many parts of the world.
While the Principles have grown over the past seven years to include 4 governments, 18 companies and 8 NGOs, companies have sought clearer guidance as to what the principles mean in practice. Several companies have prepared detailed operational guidelines for internal use. The International Finance Corporation is currently supporting an effort by the Voluntary Principles’ secretariat to develop a guidance tool for companies assist the implementation of the VPs. Other pillars of the process, i.e. governments and NGOs, have often sought clearer information about company performance in implementing the Principles. In the absence of reliable or credible indicators, companies have reported their performance using different yard-sticks and benchmarks. A comprehensive process is currently underway to develop reporting guidelines, building from the Global Reporting Initiative3 framework.
A team at International Alert has developed the draft guidelines described below to assist global efforts to bring in uniformity, clarity, and simplicity for material information that can be made available to make better decisions within the company, measure and evaluate performance internally or externally, and assist in bringing about a climate of accountability in the process. The guidelines are drawn from the work Alert did with the support of the Government of the United Kingdom’s Global Conflict Prevention Pool in 2007 and the Government of Canada’s Global Peace and Security Fund in 2008. These indicators were initially developed for the Colombian context, where Alert has long experience of operating on the ground with Colombian companies and civil society, and presented in an earlier draft form at the Annual Plenary of the Voluntary Principles in Amsterdam in early 2008. After receiving positive feedback, Alert is now disseminating, more widely, the current draft, which provides a global perspective to the issue. Alert gratefully acknowledges the excellent partnership with Fundación Ideas para la Paz (FIP) in piloting conflict sensitive business risk and impact methodologies with several members of the Comité Minero Energético para los DerechosHumanos in Colombia, and participants at a workshop at the Universidad Javeriana in June 2007 where it benefited from input from FIP, the Centro de Recursos para el Análisis del Conflicto(Colombia), Monkey Forest Consulting (Canada), Fundación Cambio Democrático (Argentina), as well as representatives from the Asociación Colombiana del Petróleo, the Colombian government and major mining and oil companies.
This pioneering effort is a work-in-progress, and it is anticipated that companies will test these indicators and provide feedback to make the indicators more robust, with the hope of developing an industry standard. It is well understood that in the initial stages, this exercise will be primarily carried out privately within companies, but that at a later stage will be shared more widely.
The primary obligation to respect, protect and fulfil human rights rests with the State. Companies have a duty to respect human rights, and in certain specific circumstances, may have an obligation to protect rights. The role of companies in conflict-affected areas is to ensure that they do not cause, contribute to, or benefit from, human rights abuses. In areas of fragile governance the responsibility de facto increases due to the absence of government institutions, and the company is obliged to carry out due diligence to prevent incidents, and report them when they occur.
The VPs are divided in three categories – risk assessment, interactions with public security, and interactions with private security. Instead of developing an indicator for each sub-heading under the principles, this guideline has taken a holistic approach to develop indicators that can, when taken together, take into account all the Principles. Indicators 1–3 deal with Human Rights Risk and ImpactAssessment. Indicators 4-7 look to ensure the adequate legal, contractual and training measures are in place. Indicators 8-9 deal with monitoring and oversight. Indicator 10 evaluates equipment transfersto security forces while Indicator 11 documents human rights incidents on company property and actions taken in response.
Companies may have their own protocol regarding recording incidents and may be unwilling to document in writing some of the information requested in this draft document. Companies may choose whether to hold this information at headquarters or at the project site. The authors recommend documenting them for three reasons.
- This is a draft to be piloted internally within companies in order to generate and receive feedback. There is no requirement to share the actual information with the public at the moment.
- If companies are going to improve practice on security and human rights issues they are going to have to create sufficient documentation to maintain an institutional memory for future managers.
- If companies’ commitments to the VPs and human rights are to be taken seriously, there is going to have to be a degree of accountability to the wider external public. This is a unique opportunity for the companies to hold themselves accountable first.
