A/HRC/32/39 62. The right to life has two components: the prevention of arbitrary deprivation of life, and accountability where life may have been arbitrarily deprived. The growth of the private security provider sector brings to the fore the question of whether private security providers adhere to the same standards as public security regarding the use of force, and whether the same level of accountability is in place should there be abuses of power. Concerns about private security providers centre on the level of training for the security guards, vetting procedures and practices in the selection process of employees, their mandates, whether they are issued with weapons and, if so, which ones, the risk of abuse of authority and excessive use of force, the level of professional standards, the adequacy of legal accountability mechanisms, and compliance with existing laws. 15 63. All States that play a role in the deployment of private security providers, whether home State, host State or contracting State, must contribute to regulating the activities of the private security provider to ensure accountability.16 The draft articles adopted by the International Law Commission in 2001 on the responsibility of States for internationally wrongful acts identify four instances when the acts of a private entity may be directly attributed to the State: (a) when the private entity is “empowered by the law of that State to exercise elements of the governmental authority … [provided that entity] is acting in that capacity in the particular instance” (art. 5); (b) when the private entity is “acting on the instruction of, or under the direction or control of, that State in carrying out the conduct” (art. 8); (c) when the private entity is “in fact exercising elements of the governmental authority in the absence or default of the official authorities and in circumstances such as to call for the exercise of those elements of authority” (art. 9); and (d) when a “State … acknowledges and adopts the conduct in question as its own” (art. 11). 64. When private security providers are tasked by the State to perform protective functions or other forms of law enforcement, and empowered to use force in that capacity, the State remains primarily responsible for their compliance with international human rights law.17 However, in practice, the uncertainties that can arise in a transnational context concerning regulation of public-private partnerships often result in an accountability deficit.18 65. The State has a duty to respect and protect human rights, including the public’s rights to bodily integrity: the rights to life, bodily security and the right to be free from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In order to achieve that goal there is an obligation on the State to install regulative and legislative frameworks that protect the human rights of those under its jurisdiction or control. When it comes to the regulation of private security providers, the State has a duty to provide a regulative framework that ensures that private security providers act in a manner respectful of human rights, and are held accountable in instances in which they do not, regardless of whether the contracting 15 16 17 18 Guadalajara, January 2003, paras. 20-23. See also Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Report on Citizen Security and Human Rights (2009), paras. 70-73. Available from www.cidh.oas.org/countryrep/Seguridad.eng/CitizenSecurity.IV.htm. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, State Regulation concerning Civilian Private Security Services and their Contribution to Crime Prevention and Community Safety (Vienna, United Nations, 2014), p. 21. O. De Schutter, “The responsibility of States”, in Private Security, Public Order, p. 26. The Special Rapporteur notes that this was the position taken by the two rapporteurs of the Human Rights Committee in preparing draft general comment No. 36 on the right to life in September 2015. Michael Likosky, “The privatization of violence” in Private Security, Public Order, p. 16. 9