Private partnerships, public peace

Abstract

This chapter looks at the ‘corporate problem’ in EU foreign policy: the absence of business in EU efforts to address global security. EU capabilities in peacebuilding and conflict prevention are developed and deployed in isolation from initiatives on business and human rights, EU regulatory dialogues with European companies or aid and development policies, and there is no coherent agenda for mainstreaming business relations within European external actions. The chapter seeks explanations for this missing link in EU policy, first addressing conceptualisations of the corporate role in security within scholarly literature, and examining the idea of business responsibility from a policy and practice perspective within EU and UN policy agendas. The chapter proposes a reframing of the private sector’s role in terms of human security, arguing that a human security perspective provides an analytical lens to better understand the kind of (in)security produced by the presence of global corporations in fragile environments, and the adoption of human security as a ‘practical strategy’ to promote a different kind of engagement between business, local society, government and the international community which takes account of local contexts and acknowledges the hybrid nature of security.