Corporate Engagement with Criminal Armed Groups? 8 Rules of Thumb
By David Nyheim, Practice Lead: Mediation and Dispute Resolution, International Conflict and Security Consulting Ltd.
What are the rules of thumb when engaging, on behalf of companies, with criminal armed groups? The question was posed to us recently by a United Nations colleague who works on the topic of business and human rights. His query is rooted in the concept of potential corporate complicity in human rights violations that follow third-party activities.
Our vantage point
Our experience on this topic for companies, which is always sanctioned by government authorities, is from Africa and the Middle East— but also goes beyond the private sector and these geographies. We do such engagement often as part of government/multilateral political mediation processes. Other agencies, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, engage with non-state armed groups for humanitarian purposes. There are few lessons learnt in the public domain on how to engage with non-state armed groups, let alone those engaged in crime. And there is no agreed good practice. Hence the question from our UN colleague.
We began to codify our experience in dealing with criminalised conflicts (or armed violence situations) in 2014. The INCAS-in-Practice publication…
