The private sector’s human rights obligation

Thursday, 10 November 2005

Felix von Geyer reports from the BSR, Washington DC

The UN's new Human Rights' Commissioner, John Ruggie, has a massive task ahead of himself over the next eighteen months. While much work and many principles already stand, from the UN Declaration to European Union legislation, NGOs continue to press the issue of human rights. To make human rights workable now requires the input of governments and the global private sector.

The panel focussed their debate on what type of framework should and can be established and, what should these parameters be over the next five to ten years.

The emphasis on the achievable over the theoretical is unanimous. The role of governments and the private sector is critical to the success of John Ruggie's task; a human rights' framework must define direct corporate responsibility. To achieve this, Eliot Schrage, recently of the US Council on Foreign Relations now Google's VP of Public Affairs, highlighted the need for both a top-down and bottom-up approach, a macro-micro reciprocation, to achieve harmonization.

The global private sector's role is critical. For example, half a billion jobs globally need to be provided by 2010 requiring human rights in practice. Current CSR practice is possibly too new for many corporations to contemplate human rights in its entirety; therefore, the development of minimum standards that are credible, viable and enforceable is essential, making the clarification of international jurisdiction similarly vital, including the role and co-operation of the host government.

Eliot Schrage predicted that John Ruggie will fail without meaningful private sector involvement and should therefore be driven by the easier questions, not exceptional issues. Yet, the complex areas of a company's spheres of influence, in terms of investing in countries with poor human rights records, raises the issue of complicity and the violation of international law.

Now, the world is far from a perfect place and, in a separate session on Equitorial Guinea, the good work of Marathon Oil in combating malaria and promoting health and education would have been undone if someone were to point to the government's poor track record on human rights and, by dint, accuse Marathon of complicity. Through this example, in discussing spheres of influence, the idea of capacity-building was not mentioned as a human rights issue, which, at the risk of hair-splitting, should come under the private sector's sense of duty.

Complicity remains a vast, complex and untested area. The US has its own 'Alien Tort Statute' but the message rings loud and clear: that, while there is much good work done by the private sector in terms of the World Economic Forum's Anti-Corruption Initiative, the UN Global Compact, the Extractive Industries' Transparency Initiative, the global private sector must mobilize themselves to ensure their sphere of influence provides meaningful definition and implementation of human rights. For the benefit of global society, and for themselves, they can no longer pay lip service.

< Prev		Next >

[ Back ]