Who's minding the store ? The business of Private, Public and Civil Actors in Zones of Conflict

This briefing paper assesses the relationship between the private sector and conflicts. It examines the private sectors involvement in violent conflicts, and introduces approaches aimed at containing the negative impact of businesses on conflict dynamics and at involving the private sector actively in crisis prevention and peace building. The briefing paper focuses on multinational corporations in the extractive industry. The briefing paper highlights that: * multinational corporations cannot remain neutral within conflict environments as they become political actors in their own right * a difficult situation arises if security is provided for company assets and personnel by security forces of the host state who are party to a conflict as this is inevitably perceived as the company siding with the government and its forces, and human rights violations committed by the forces will automatically be attributed to the company as well * over the past years a number of codes of conduct, guidelines and principles guiding corporate behaviour have been created, and even though most initiatives do not aim directly at conflict prevention, they deal with related issues such as human rights and environmental standards * the voluntary, self-regulating character of most international initiatives puts their effectiveness into question. The briefing paper proposes to transcend the voluntary vs. mandatory debate, and introduces a concept of "co-regulation". A blueprint for such a model could be the Financial Action task Force on Money Laundering and the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme which rely on cooperation between international organisations, governments, industry and non-governmental organisations