IDG’s Commitment to its Places and People

IDG was founded two decades ago on the basis of bringing ethical practice into the private security sector, while providing an honourable, sustainable income for thousands of people and their families. This focus on people being placed before profits has allowed IDG to successfully deliver services to the world’s most significant international organisations for this length of time, while ensuring that the organisation can respond positively to the inevitable crises that face its people and the areas in which we work.

An example of this is seen in during Covid. As the virus scourged its way through Somalia in 2020, we deployed a sizeable company Health Protection Fund to safeguard as best possible our personnel, their families and their communities. The measures this fund provided for – including the hiring of community nurses, the regular provision of individual and home cleaning kits and PPE, and comprehensive awareness training to guards and their families – helped ensure that not a single member of IDG staff became seriously ill with the disease.

In keeping with safeguarding the human element, IDG instituted a global policy of ‘no shame’ self- reporting of Covid symptoms, to great success. This ensured every employee knew that in the event of them testing positive with the virus, their jobs would be secure, that they would continue to be fully paid while recovering, and that their reporting the infection would not cause them to be ostracised amongst their peers.

IDG encountered an entirely different humanitarian issue during the tumultuous summer of 2021 in Afghanistan: 33 Nepalese workers had become stranded in Kabul as the Taliban approached the city, with no money, no means of leaving the country, nor any accommodation. Being the only remaining international security company in Afghanistan during that period, IDG brought these men into our main compound in Kabul, housing and feeding them for 10 weeks until the situation had calmed to the point where we could arrange for them to be flown out.

These are just some of the ways that IDG seeks to directly and tangibly support the countries and peoples with whom we are most closely linked, and we derive great pride in continuing to do so.