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.
