Stop G4S

G4S is the largest security company in the world, with operations in 125 countries. In 2007, G4S Israel signed a contract with the Israeli Prison Authority to provide security systems and services to all of the major Israeli prisons and detention centers. G4S currently services detention centers and prisons where Palestinians under administrative detention are held without charge or trial on six-month detention orders, renewable indefinitely. 

Al-Moskobiyeh and Al-Jalameh detention and interrogation centers, serviced by G4S, are well-known for their use of torture, including of children. G4S also has contracts with the Israeli government to provide equipment and services to checkpoints that make up the Annexation wall, crossings that enforce the siege of Gaza and Israeli police stations. G4S guards operate at various Israeli military bases.

Palestinian civil society organizations released a call for action in support of thousands of Palestinian prisoners who went on hunger strike in April 2012 to protest administrative detention, solitary confinement, and limitations on family visits. The call urged action to hold G4S accountable for complicity violations of international law and human rights violations in Israeli prisons and detention centers.

Community organizations, trade unions, faith and student groups from around the world are also urging the United Nations to end its contracts with G4S, that currently provides services to UN facilities and agencies which violates the UN’s own guidelines.

G4S is the largest security company in the world, with operations in 125 countries. In 2007, G4S Israel signed a contract with the Israeli Prison Authority to provide security systems and services to all of the major Israeli prisons and detention centers. G4S currently services detention centers and prisons where Palestinians under administrative detention are held without charge or trial on six-month detention orders, renewable indefinitely.

International mobilization has caused G4S to lose contracts worth millions of dollars with for example universities in Oslo and Bergen and major charities in South Africa. In June 2014, the Gates Foundation divested the whole of its $170 million holding in the company as a result of this international campaign.

At its June 2014 annual general meeting, G4S chairman John Connolly told shareholders that G4S “did not expect to renew” its contract with the Israeli Prison Service, and mentioned 2017 as a possible date by which it would end its involvement in Israel’s prison system. However, G4S has not set out this commitment in writing and continues to profit from Israel’s abhorrent prison system. 

The International G4S campaign shall therefore continue until G4S entirely ends its complicity in human right violations by providing services to the Israeli Prison Service.