No Movement?

What the Caterpillar campaign, and the attention of the a UN Commissioner, may do is increase attention on the issue of corporate complicity with human rights abuses, helping us to regard certain practices not as merely regrettable but as specific human rights violations, which could be prosecuted in the future. What it won't do is help the people in whose name these issues are raised, at least not in the near future.

Considering the bigger picture, in April the 60th Commission on Human Rights (HCR) was a major failure in the move towards promoting mandatory corporate accountability for human rights. The HCR discussed the recommendations if its Sub-Commission on the role of transnational corporations, including the Draft Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights. The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and International Organisation of Employers (IOE) continued their staunch opposition to the Norms and their face-to-face lobbying with government delegations to encourage them to reject the Norms and declare them to be un-called for and not having any legal bearing at all. "If put into effect" the Norms "will undermine human rights, the business sector of society, and the right to development," they said.44

Sir Geoffrey Chandler, who is both a former chair of Amnesty International UK Business Group, and a former Director of Shell International, said by attacking the Norms, the "ICC and IOE bring discredit to their own organisations and do a disservice to their members." He explained they "portray a dangerous lack of understanding of the world in which companies operate today and of the risks with which they are confronted."45

Sune Skadegard Thorsen, Senior Advisor on CSR at Novo Nordisk, commented that "It has become a tradition for these organisations to oppose any kind of legislation or regulation that limits the behaviour of companies". Her company is participating in the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights (BLIHR), which in April officially launched a three-year project to look at the business benefits of attention to human rights. They are joined by ABB, Barclays PLC, Hewlett Packard, MTV Networks Europe, National Grid Transco plc, Novartis and the Body Shop International. A number of them are trialing the Norms in for their own operations.46

The lobbying against the Norm worked, as the CHR resolution on the matter completely rejected the outcome of the process they had initially requested, saying that the document containing the Norms had "not been requested by the Commission and, as a draft proposal, has no legal standing, and that the Sub-Commission should not perform any monitoring function in this regard."47 The CHR decided to request another report on the matter, to be done by the Office of the High Commissioner itself (OHCHR).

Amnesty International tried to put a positive spin on this outcome. "This is the first time the UN Commission has companies' responsibilities on its agenda" they said. They hoped to save the process by encouraging the OHCHR to build on the progress made by the Sub-Commission. "Amnesty International expects that the OHCHR will draw on the Norms and their related Commentary as a principal source in the identification and assessment of existing standards in this area."48 This is optimistic, given the political pressures that led to the rejection of the existing outputs from the process. Instead, the drafting of a new report will be less well-resourced and conducted by less experienced and qualified persons than that prepared by the Sub-Commission, and be more politically cautious. Some may say they took the matter out of the hands of experts and placed it in the hands of bureaucrats, establishing another process because they did not like the results of the first one.

There are a number of lessons from this. First, it illustrates the success of the two-pronged strategy of some corporations to engage voluntarily with social and environmental issues, with some NGOs and some parts of the UN, and then using the existence of that voluntary engagement to undermine processes towards developing or implementing mandatory rules on their behaviour. The use of lobby groups to further the political interests of specific companies, while somewhat shielding them from negative coverage themselves, is key to this strategy. One organisation argued that Shell International was using the ICC and IoE as a cover for its own aggressive lobbying against the Norms. They reported that Robin Aram, Shell's Vice-President of External Relations and Policy Development, worked with the ICC's Commission on 'Business in Society' to combat the Norms. Aram confirmed that "From a Shell perspective we don't find the Norms helpful."49 Given the prompting to come forward, Shell confirmed their stance against the Norms but said it was wrong "to imply that because we express our concerns about the draft Norms that in some way undermines or puts into question our commitment to support human rights."50 If the commitment is real, then they may have some further way to go in their understanding of how to ensure human rights for all.

A second lesson is the lack of strategy and coordination by mainstream nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and those companies that support the human rights Norms, in order to prioritise the lobbying of governmental delegations. NGOs working on corporate accountability were distracted by various processes with no legal power and no implementation structures, such as the Johannesburg World Summit on Social Development, wasting scarce advocacy efforts on them. More radical groups working on this agenda spent time with their own processes, such as the World Social Forum and European Social Forum, where preaching to the choir distracts from the need to utilise traditional the mechanisms of power - governments and courts. Many NGOs did become involved in the process of deliberating the Norms, but the outcome proves that their form is a political issue, not a technical or intellectual one. Public joint statements to their own communities, and sympathetic yet small media outlets were not effective. Delivering it at the Commission itself was too late to make any difference, appearing more like rhetoric.51

Nevertheless, the failure of the Norms may lead to some critical reflection amongst the corporate citizenship community, and a renewed impetus for coordinating efforts towards systemic change. A paper published by the UN's Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) in June argued that a corporate accountability movement could now be identified, which may lead to that systemic change. Barricades and Boardrooms, chronicles the failure of various national and international attempts to restrict the growth of corporate power during the twentieth century, in order to locate a discussion of recent events.52 It argues that the growth of a global civil society in the last decades has created a new context, and a new opportunity to address the problems posed by growing corporate power. A range of relations between corporations and civil society groups are analysed, including the way these have created a renewed emphasis on corporate social responsibility. The paper examines the limitations of voluntary corporate initiatives in addressing systemic problems in the global economy, but suggests voluntary corporate responsibility could be an opportunity if it can lead to the re-channelling of corporate power to address those systemic problems. Thus a new generation of partnerships may emerge, which involve companies collaborating with civil society groups to push for more appropriate and effective regulation. A recent example of this was when 15 socially responsible investment organizations with a combined $28.5 billion in assets under management asked the US Congress to support the International Right to Know (IRTK) campaign, which proposes legislation on corporate reporting on social and environmental performance worldwide.53

The paper concludes with a discussion of whether accomplishing greater corporate accountability will address the systemic problems with world development. It introduces a new concept that looks beyond the corporation and to the accountability of capital itself. This concept of 'capital accountability' arises from reconsidering the obligations that must be placed on the bearers of property rights. The concept is argued to provide an opportunity for common ground to be found among progressives working in the quite separate arenas of corporate accountability, corporate social responsibility and anti-globalization.