Voluntary Principles

In 2000 the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights (VPs) was established. This was established as a multi-stakeholder initiative involving governments, companies, and nongovernmental organizations. The VPs are designed to help extractive companies maintain the safety and security of their operations within an operating framework that ensures respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and, when applicable, for international humanitarian law. Since its establishment more companies, governments, and NGOs have joined the initiative, and many other companies have publicly signaled that they apply the VPs at their operational sites. The interface of government, private sector and the voluntary sector mutually reinforce and encourage effective implementation and compliance level of VPs in targeted countries, States and communities.

It is important to note that while the duty to protect human rights rests with governments, businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights as outlined in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, by acting with due diligence to avoid harming people and addressing adverse impacts with which they are involved. Specifically, the VPs guide companies in conducting a comprehensive human rights risk assessment in their engagement with the public and private security providers to ensure human rights are respected in the protection of company facilities and premises. Extractives companies often operate in complex environments with little guidance on the ground on how to observe their human rights responsibilities. Thus, this makes the case for the need for the application of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights.

Nigeria is yet to sign the VPs. The country has recorded and continue to record high rate of violations by security agencies with States and communities with extractive industries being one of the most volatile and worse hit in respect to this. There is need to mainstream the awareness creation, training and capacity development on the Voluntary Principles through creative methodologies and existing mechanisms for training/capacity building for security agencies both at the security agencies training institutions and operations/field levels as well as at headquarter level that are tasked with the responsibility for initiating policy directives and deployment of security officers to field operations. Training modules and information on the Voluntary Principles need to be integrated into the training curriculum and training resource/awareness materials of the various security agencies.

These should also provide opportunity to offer the targeted agencies clear guide for implementation of the VPs for companies, their employees, and contractors. It should also include modules such as Understanding the Voluntary Principles, Stakeholder Engagement, Risk Assessment), Public Security Providers, and Private Security Providers. The targeted institutions should include the following: Nigeria Police Force, Nigerian Security and Civil Defense Corp, Navy (for protection of Offshore Oil Assets), JTF, Army and where possible, private security agencies.