Private Military and Security Companies and Gendered Human Rights Challenges: Oversight or Blatant Disregard?

It is well documented that the private military and security industry has the capacity to do great gendered harms to both those it employs and those it encounters. Significantly, it is also a sector where a variety of significant approaches, instruments, and mechanisms have emerged beyond the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) to promote respect for human rights. These regulatory frameworks address gender and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and explicitly expect, or require, PMSCs to include gender considerations in their practices. Through an examination of publicly available documents and policies required by the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Providers (ICoC) for private military and security companies (PMSCs) certified as complying with the code, this piece evaluates to what extent PMSCs do in fact integrate gender considerations into their human rights policies and grievance procedures. Our study of certified PMSCs demonstrates that despite the increased attention around the potential for negative gender impacts, this has not led companies to develop gender-responsive policies and procedures or to include gender considerations in their practices beyond mere references. It can be said therefore, that gender is not addressed in any meaningful way by PMSCs. More specifically, we conclude that PMSCs have not yet shown the required holistic understanding of gendered impacts and barriers that is required to respect human rights, and that further efforts are needed in the sector to ensure that gender and SGBV are properly accounted for in the sector’s practices.