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Fear of ‘human rights abuses’ lead Norway wealth fund to ban shares in G4S 

November 14, 2019 at 2:32 pm

A protest against G4S, 27 July 2017 [Aimee Valinski/Flickr]

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has banned investment in G4S because of the risk of human rights violations being committed by the company in Qatar and the UAE, the Guardian reported today.

“Norway’s Council of Ethics, which monitors investments in the country’s £860bn Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), said there was an ‘unacceptable risk of the company contributing to systematic human rights violations’,” the paper added.

“The company’s practice – in the worse cases – could place workers under constraint,” the council said.

In March 2017, a Yemeni court ordered G4S to pay millions in back pay and compensation to security guards who accused the firm of abandoning them after the war broke out in the country. The company denied the charges.

READ: Rights group condemns Israel’s campaign against BDS

The security firm has long been the target of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign as a result of its involvement in Israeli aggression Palestinian prisoners and Al-Aqsa Mosque.

A G4S subsidiary runs a national police training centre inside Israeli prisons where thousands of Palestinians are detained and holds a contract with Israel to build the Israeli Police Academy in the illegal settlement of Beit Shemesh. This academy offers all forms of training for Israel, which practices torture against the Palestinian people, mainly in occupied Jerusalem.