A/HRC/32/39 guarding shopping malls, residencies and public streets, providing security during demonstrations, running prisons and detention centres, training armed forces and police, performing intelligence assessments and risk analyses, escorting convoys and ships, providing personal security for diplomats, and offering many other services.3 53. In previous reports, the Special Rapporteur has developed international standards relating to the use of force by law enforcement officials in the context of assemblies (A/HRC/17/28) and in the context of arrest (A/66/330). He has also reported on the need for proper domestic legislative frameworks on the use of force by the police (A/HRC/26/36). In the present report, he explores the implications of the privatization of security provision for the observance of those standards, and makes recommendations aimed at ensuring that standards protecting the right to life are not diminished through privatization. 54. In the present report, the Special Rapporteur focuses on the private provision of security services in law enforcement contexts. The use of force by private entities in the conduct of hostilities will not be discussed. The Special Rapporteur underlines the fact that the established rules of international humanitarian law about determining a situation as an armed conflict should be used. Not all uses of force in an armed conflict qualify as the conduct of hostilities. For example, the provision of close protection to a businessperson or diplomat in a State that is engaged in armed conflict does not ordinarily amount to direct participation in hostilities, and any use of force in such contexts should be evaluated with reference to domestic and international standards on law enforcement. 55. Throughout the present report, the Special Rapporteur uses the term “private security providers” to describe all those private parties providing security services, regardless of how they define themselves. 56. The provision of private security services on international waters, the use of private security providers to ward off pirates, on deep-water drilling platforms and in other contexts, are not analysed. That complex issue is worthy of a report in its own right.4 57. While many major private security providers have their headquarters in Europe and North America, the industry operates and employs people across the globe. G4S, the world’s largest private security company, employs more than 623,000 people on six different continents, of whom more than three-fifths are in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.5 However, although some of the larger private security providers clearly qualify as transnational corporations, a substantial segment of the market is made up of small- or medium-sized private security providers that may not operate internationally. 58. Certain international business and human rights norms may apply irrespective of the size, sector, operational context or ownership structure, including the Guiding Principles on 3 4 5 See R. Abrahamsen and A. Leander, eds., Routledge Handbook of Private Security Studies (London and New York, Routledge, 2015). See also H. Born, M. Caparini and E. Cole, “Regulating private security in Europe: status and prospects”, Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), Policy Paper No. 20 (Geneva, DCAF, 2007), pp. 2-3. See “Counterpiracy under international law”, Academy Briefing No. 1 (Geneva, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, 2012); Alice Priddy, “The use of weapons in counterpiracy operations” in Weapons under International Human Rights Law, S. Casey-Maslen, ed., (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014). See www.g4s.com/en/Who%20we%20are/Our%20people/Our%20employees/. 7