Profile
February 09 2009
by briefing staff
250 CEOs issue global human rights statement
To mark the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, nearly 250 chief executives organized in the UN Global Compact issued a statement on December 10 renewing their commitment to respect and support human rights within their sphere of influence, and calling on governments to meet their human rights obligations. The statement followed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s address to mark the anniversary of the landmark document where he warned that the international community has not lived up to the vision held in the Declaration saying: “We see human trafficking, the exploitation of children, and a host of other ills plaguing millions of people,” adding that despite “all the lessons we profess to have learned, shocking acts of brutality against innocent people often go unanswered.”
Contact: The United Nations Global Compact
www.unglobalcompact.org
| Has the issue of business and human rights taken a wrong turn? |
| The 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights caused 250 top CEOs to renew their commitment to respect and support human rights within their sphere of influence. They then went on to call upon governments to meet their human rights obligations too. The left-right paradigm has fallen out of favour in recent years. However, it is clear that the business leaders were way out to the left of the UN Secretary General. He greeted the anniversary with a cringing 184 word statement. The word ‘government’ appeared nowhere in the statement. The nearest he got to the G word was observing: “There is political repression in too many countries.” He got round to this only after touching on the food emergency, the global financial crisis and our assault on the natural environment – none of them human rights issues! Delivering human rights requires an effective system of the rule of law. It requires an open and genuine commitment by governments to those rights. Human rights are only fully realisable in a liberal, democratic society. The main, global cause of failure to deliver on human rights is a failure of will, whether by deliberate choice or inherent inefficiency by governments. All this went unsaid by the man with the greatest responsibility to say it. It is good that the CEOs were willing to commit to human rights within their control. It is laudable that they were willing to address the issue of government. Yet one cannot but believe that, unless governments and inter-governmental organisations take a more robust stand on human rights, the current flurry of business activity on human rights will begin to ebb. What will the state of play on human rights be for 2018, the Universal Declaration’s 70th birthday? One suspects little different from today but with less complete engagement from business because of lack of effective governmental and inter-governmental response. |
| Peter Truesdale Peter.truesdale@corporate-citizenship.com |
Wipro discloses vendor status with World Bank
Wipro Technologies, the Indian IT services business, announced on January 13 that the World Bank had determined the company would be ineligible to contest direct contracts from the World Bank for the period 2007 – 2011 due to a share purchase in the company made by World Bank staff that took place in 2000. Wipro has claimed that all participants in the preference share program had signed a conflict of interest statement. However a disagreement emerged over the use of the term ‘gift’. The release of the statement followed recent bad news for the sector regarding corporate governance with the discovery that IT firm Satyam’s CEO had perpetrated the largest fraud in India’s history, managing to overstate the company’s worth by $1 billion.
Contact: Wipro
www.wipro.com
Goldman Sachs, NATO, and IOC among the world’s least accountable organizations
Many of the world’s most powerful corporate (TNC), intergovernmental (IGO) and non-governmental (INGO) organisations are unanswerable to the people they affect according to The Global Accountability Report, released on December 8 by global governance think tank, the One World Trust. The top performer amongst corporates was BHP Billiton. Now in its third year, the report confirms that each sector stands out in one dimension – whilst IGOs show strong transparency and evaluation systems, INGOs show the best capabilities for encouraging participation and TNCs tend to show superior complaint and response mechanisms.
Contact: One World Trust
www.oneworldtrust.org
Former laggard Wal-Mart turns into ethical leader
A report published by Geneva-based ethical reputation research firm Covalence on December 11 – The Covalence Retail Industry Report 2008 – revealed that Wal-Mart had jumped up to the third rank, behind Marks & Spencer and Home Depot. A year ago Wal-Mart was still last in the ranking calculated for 27 companies in the retail industry. According to the report’s authors, the evolution of retailers illustrates the non-spontaneous nature of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) whereby companies that are doing the most are generally the ones that have been particularly criticized in the past: the largest ones. In the meantime, smaller, less exposed companies are not doing as much in terms of CSR.
Contact: Covalence
www.covalence.ch