Security and human rights | Environmental management

Local Azeri men walking through a field, Azerbaijan

We continue to take action to embed the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights (the Voluntary Principles) into our operations

During 2008 we completed a guideline for businesses on the Voluntary Principles. The guideline aims to make implementation more effective and consistent by providing practical tools and integrating them as much as possible into BP’s management systems. For example, we have incorporated into our security management planning process a tool to help businesses assess the potential impacts of their security arrangements on people and communities. We have inserted guidance on the Voluntary Principles into our competency requirements for security professionals and created an e-learning module to help support learning and development.

The guideline has been rolled out to businesses, building on a programme of awareness workshops in key locations in 2007 and 2008. During 2009, our focus will continue to be on supporting implementation in locations where there are potential human rights risks associated with the security arrangements for our business.

Training and education on human rights

One area where we focused effort on implementation in 2008 was at our Tangguh LNG project in West Papua, Indonesia, where we continued to support training and education on human rights for public security forces and the project’s security guards.

We acknowledge the view of the Tangguh Independent Advisory Panel that security and human rights concerns result ‘primarily from actions by the security forces in the past or in other parts of Papua’, but we continue to work to ensure that a progressive approach to security is put in place for the Tangguh project. We continue therefore to promote training and dialogue with the police and security services to support the integrated community-based security programme we have established for the project.

We used an external training consultancy, together with two senior Indonesian police instructors, to provide further instruction on community policing and civil disturbance management in a two-week 'train the trainers' course in Jayapura, Papua in early 2008. The students included a mix of senior police officers and patrol officers, plus private security guards employed at the BP-operated LNG facility. Having created a pool of instructors, BP Indonesia has since supported nine more batches of training for 299 private security guards. Moreover, training has been provided for members from two regional police units in Bintuni and Fak-Fak, and for members of the Indonesian national police’s mobile brigade.

Independent assessment of our implementation

Elsewhere, we commissioned an independent assessment of our implementation of the Voluntary Principles within our operations in Georgia. We published an independent assessment of implementation in Azerbaijan and made public an agreement with the government of Azerbaijan on the implementation of security and human rights principles in the provision of security for our operations. An independent auditor described this protocol as establishing ‘an international benchmark on co-operation between the state and the private sector with respect to security and human rights.’ In Colombia, we participated in a human rights workshop organized by the Colombian Oil Association to engage oil sector contractors and service providers.