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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri

Time: 12:11 pm

Results for security companies

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Author: Kinosian, Sarah

Title: Security for Sale: Challenges and Good Practices in Regulating Private Military and Security Companies in Latin America

Summary: Just before midnight on March 2, 2016, assassins broke into Berta Caceres' home and murdered her in her bedroom. Caceres was an indigenous leader in a peaceful campaign against the Agua Zarca dam on a river considered sacred by the indigenous Lenca community of Honduras. In the months leading up to her death, Caceres, along with the resistance movement she led, endured threats, smear campaigns, physical assaults, sexual assaults and forced eviction. The recently-arrested executive president of the company building the dam, Desarrollos Energeticos SA, (DESA), was a former military intelligence officer. On DESA's board sits a former justice minister and several members of one of the richest and most powerful families in Honduras. An international group of lawyers studying the case established "shareholders, executives, managers, and employees of Desarrollos Energeticos Sociedad Anonima (DESA); private security companies working for DESA; and public officials and State security agencies implemented different strategies to violate the right to prior, free and informed consultation of the Lenca indigenous people. The strategy was to control, neutralize and eliminate any opposition." So far nine people have been arrested, four of whom have ties to the Honduran military. Among many other issues, including high-level corruption, the Caceres assassination is emblematic of many problems associated with the private sector security industry in Latin America. The lines between current and retired military personnel and the private company were blurred. There was an interwoven network of current military, former military, private security, business elites and government officials. The dispute involved an energy project opposed by a local community, a context in which many of the worst Private Military and Security Company (PMSC) abuses occur across the region. The sustained use of surveillance, threats, and force against the Lenca community-culminating with Caceres' assassination- was excessive and politicized, clearly violating the rules of engagement for public and private security forces. Some of the individuals responsible for the murder were only arrested after significant international outcry, but most of the masterminds behind the killing remain free.

Details: Washington, DC: The Dialogue, 2018. 20p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 16, 2018 at: https://www.thedialogue.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Security-for-Sale-FINAL-ENGLISH.pdf

Year: 2018

Country: Latin America

URL: https://www.thedialogue.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Security-for-Sale-FINAL-ENGLISH.pdf

Shelf Number: 149813

Keywords:
Citizen Security
Military Personnel
Private Security
Privatization
Security Companies