A/HRC/45/9 should take legal and policy measures to favour the use of alternatives to detention, with deprivation of liberty as a last resort.56 85. States must introduce measures to ensure accountability of companies and their personnel for human rights violations and abuses against migrants caused directly or indirectly by their business activities. This should include enabling legislation and other concrete mechanisms, including in relation to investigation, prosecution and punishment of company personnel, and measures to ensure non-repetition. 86. Given the heightened risk of gross human rights abuses associated with the provision of private military and security services in immigration and border management, companies in this sector need to exercise heightened human rights due diligence to avoid causing, contributing or becoming directly linked to adverse human rights impacts. This due diligence process should take place at all stages of their operations in order to capture potential and actual human rights impacts. For example, in order to avoid the risk of complicity in the return of migrants to situations in which they will suffer human rights harm, airlines and companies providing secure transportation services should conduct thorough checks to ensure that all migrants under their supervision will not face risks of human rights violations or abuses when returned. Such companies should refuse to transport migrants until they have benefited from a proper individualized assessment of their human rights protection needs. Another crucial part of the human rights due diligence process is adequate vetting and training of security personnel. 87. Companies in this sector should be obliged to publicly disclose accessible, clear and non-ambiguous information with regard to their contracts and operations, to the same extent as public entities with similar functions. 88. Where companies identify that they have caused or contributed to adverse human rights impacts, they should fully disclose information pertaining to those impacts, and provide or cooperate in their remediation through legitimate processes. In instances in which these impacts amount to gross human rights violations and abuses, including crimes, they should fully cooperate with judicial mechanisms leading to accountability and effective remedies for victims. 89. Multi-stakeholder initiatives, such as the International Code of Conduct Association and the Montreux Document Forum, should consider how to overcome current gaps in their founding texts that fail to capture explicitly companies providing private military and security services in immigration and border management. This is of particular importance given the magnitude of this sector, the risks associated with privatization of immigration detention and border control functions, and the absence of an international legally binding human rights instrument for the regulation, monitoring and oversight of the activities of private military and security companies. 56 For more detailed recommendations regarding privatized immigration detention, see A/72/286. 19

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