Future Security Trends: Implications for Human Rights

In this episode, we speak with Anne-Marie Buzatu, Vice President and COO of ICT4Peace Foundation, who played a pivotal role in the development of the International Code of Conduct and the founding of ICoCA. Anne-Marie shares insights from her time as a principal architect of the initiative and reflects on the challenges faced during the creation of governance and oversight mechanisms for private security companies.

In this episode we speak to Mark DeWitt, chief legal officer and general counsel at Gardaworld Federal Services. He was on the first intake of the ICoCA’s board of directors and played an instrumental role before the association was founded.

S2E3 - In this episode, we welcome Amol Mehra, director of industry programs at Laudes Foundation. He was one of the founding board members of ICoCA. Amol will tell us more about the process of creation of the ICoCA, and specifically, about the role that the civil society play in the process of ensuring accountability of private security companies.

In this episode we speak to Rémy Friedmann, Senior Advisor on Business and Human Rights at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs who was ICoCA's first Chair of the Board of Directors and guided the Association through its early years.

In this episode, we welcome Andrew Clapham, professor of international law at the Geneva Graduate Institute, and member of  ICoCA's Advisory Group. Having been involved in the development and drafting of the International Code of Conduct, he will walk us through the context, as well as the process of the negotiations that have preceded the Code's establishment. 

After a career in the Gurkhas and Singapore Police, Ian Gordon founded his own private security company, IDG Security, an ICoCA Certified Member Company with operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Myanmar. So what are the pitfalls in recruiting private security personnel from South Asia, and how does Ian avoid these? We talk to Ian about the powerful role agents play, and how this is leading to third country nationals contracted as private security guards ending up as bonded labourers in many complex environments.

In the 13th episode we talk to Simon Pears, Chair of the International Professional Security Association (IPSA). Simon is implementing a plan that could potentially provide IPSA with key data about the treatment of frontline security personnel around the world. So why is this important, and if successful, how might this data inform policy and practice related to the private security sector and human rights across different jurisdictions? 

Richard Robinson is a Senior Advisor for GardaWorld. His vast experience has seen him working in and across all sectors, corporate, non-profit and government. He was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and spent the last two decades there, which included setting up one of the largest tin mines in the world in a remote region of North Kivu. So what have his experiences working for and contracting private security companies in DRC taught him about the role responsible security can play in settings renowned for corruption and conflict?