The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) in Jordan has dropped its contracts with the world’s largest security firm occupation profiteer G4S following an ongoing BDS campaign over the firm’s role in Israel’s violations of human rights Jordan BDS has reported.
Jordan BDS said it welcomes UN Women’s decision and salutes the agency for taking a principled step in line with its core values of promoting human rights and human dignity. Accordingly UN Women has become the fifth UN agency in Jordan to drop its contracts with occupation profiteer G4S alongside WFP UNOPS UNICEF and UNHCR.
G4S has a track record in human and refugee rights violations in many countries across the world which led dozens of universities unions pension funds and more to drop their contracts with the company as well as divest their shares from it following calls by the BDS movement worldwide.
The #UNDropG4S campaign began in 2015 in which Jordan BDS took an active part through organizing actions and lobbying with different UN agencies the latest of which was a demonstration outside UN Women office in Amman in commemorating Nakba in partnership with multiple Jordanian civil society organizations.
Jordan BDS demanded the local and regional offices of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP and UNDP MENA) – the last UN office in Jordan to hold contracts with G4S – to follow the lead of the five UN agencies before it that showed a firm commitment to human rights. Its demand is based on UN documents which it said UNDP is breaching including the UN Supplier Code of Conduct the UN Special Rapporteur for OPT report and the UN Global Compact.
Jordan BDS also said that it is truly shocking that UNDP persists with its breach until now and continues to dismiss the values and principles that the agency itself proclaims to defend.
Jordan BDS confirmed that its campaign against G4S will continue in parallel with the regional campaigns in Lebanon Kuwait and Morocco as well as globally until G4S stops profiting from the occupation and fully withdraws from its remaining contracts in Israel including its agreement with the Israeli Police Academy (Policity) in Occupied Jerusalem.
