November/December
2000
In
the Public Interest: The United Nations and Big Business
By Ralph
Nader
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The last few years have witnessed
the increasing blurring of corporate and governmental roles in
the international
sphere—none more worrisome, perhaps, than the United Nations cozying
up to big business. With a surge in private-public partnerships among
various UN agencies, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is leading the
international organization into evermore intrusive and entangling ties
with multinational corporations.
One recent misstep is the UN’s “Global Compact”. With
the disappointing support of some international human rights and environmental
organizations, the UN has asked multinational corporations to sign on
to the Compact’s unenforceable and overly vague code of conduct.
Companies are able to sign on to the Compact and “bluewash” themselves
by using the blue UN logo, as critics at the Transnational Resource
and Action Center (TRAC) in San Francisco have labeled the
efforts by image-impaired corporations to repair public perceptions
by hooking up with the UN.
“The UN must not become complicit in the positive branding of corporations
that violate UN principles,” warned a coalition of sustainable
development activists organized by TRAC in a July letter to Annan. “Given
that there is no provision for monitoring a corporation’s record
in abiding by UN principles, the Guidelines’ [the “Guidelines
on Cooperation Between the UN and the Business Community”—see
Sidebar] modalities for partnerships are quite susceptible to abuse.
For example, a company with widespread labor or environmental violations
may be able to join with the UN in a relatively minor cooperative project
and gain all the benefits of association with the UN without any responsibilities.
The UN would have no way to determine whether the company, on balance,
is contributing to UN goals or preventing their realization.”
This kind of bluewashing is already taking place. Among the early supporters
of the Compact are Nike, Shell, and Rio Tinto. Nike has employed sweatshop
workers in Asia and elsewhere to produce its overpriced athletic wear.
Shell has been targeted by activists for its ties to the Nigerian government,
which has a dismal human rights history. Rio Tinto, one of the world’s
largest mining companies, has been associated with environmental and
human rights disasters around the world. These are three of the last
companies you would expect to see on a list of responsible businesses.
Just as troublesome, Kofi Annan has framed the Compact in the context
of acceptance and promotion of corporate globalization, a kind of plea
to business leaders to recognize their own self-interest in restraining
some of their worst abuses. In exchange for corporations signing on
to the Global Compact, he said when first announcing the initiative,
the UN would seek both to make it easy for companies to enter partnerships
with UN agencies and to advocate the speeding up of corporate globalization. “You may find it useful to interact with us through our newly created
website, www.un.org/partners, which offers one-stop shopping for corporations
interested in the UN,” he told business leaders gathered in January
1999 at the Davos World Economic Forum. “More important, perhaps,
is what we can do in the political arena, to help make the case for
and maintain an environment which favors trade and open markets.”
The promise of the UN, if only sometimes realized, is to serve as an
intergovernmental body to advance justice, human rights and sustainable
development worldwide. Not long ago, the UN’s Center on Transnational
Corporations collected critical data on multinationals and published
incisive critiques of growing corporate power. Unfortunately, that
same
growing corporate power eventually was sufficient to force the closure
of the Center on Transnational Corporations, thanks to the demands
of
the U.S. Now, with the UN permitting itself to become perverted with
corporate sponsorships, partnerships and other entanglements, it risks
veering down the road of commercialization and marginalization.
An effective UN must be free of corporate encumbrances. Its agencies
should be the leading critics of the many ways that corporate globalization
is functioning to undermine the UN missions to advance ecological sustainability,
human rights and global economic justice—not apologists and collaborators
with the dominant corporate order.
The Global Compact Corporate Partners
Below is a list of some of
the 50 Global Compact partners with the most egregious human rights
and environmental records.
Shell has a history of environmental destruction and complicity
in human rights abuses, most infamously in Nigeria. Ogoni activist Ken
Saro-Wiwa blamed his execution squarely on Shell. Its operations there
are also notorious for environmental contamination and double standards.
Shell has adopted sophisticated rhetoric about its social responsibilities,
but it has not shown understanding, let alone remorse, about its own
role. For example, on its website, Shell posts a photograph of a pro-Ogoni
rally, without acknowledging that the Ogoni people’s protests have
been against Shell itself.
BP Amoco is another company with sophisticated rhetoric on environmental
and social issues. But their actions do not measure up. CEO John Browne
admits that climate change is a problem for any oil company, yet his
company continues to search for oil and gas even in remote and pristine
regions. Its investments in renewable energy are a pittance compared
with the size of the corporation and its investments in ongoing fossil
fuel exploration and production.
Nike, an international symbol of sweatshops and corporate greed,
is the target of one of the most active global campaigns for corporate
accountability. The company has made announcements of changes to its
behavior only after enormous public pressure. It has also aggressively
opposed the only union and human rights group-supported independent
monitoring program—the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC). CEO Phil
Knight withdrew a $30 million donation to the University of Oregon after
the University joined the WRC. Nike also cut its multi-million dollar
contracts with the University of Michigan and Brown University after
they joined the WRC. Nike became a sweatshop poster child not just through
complicity in labor abuses but through active searching for countries
with non-union labor, low wages, and low environmental standards for
its manufacturing operations. Nike is a leader in the “race to
the bottom”—a trend that epitomizes the negative tendencies
of corporate-led globalization.
Rio Tinto Plc is a British mining corporation which has created
so many environment, human rights, and development problems that a global
network of trade unions, indigenous peoples, church groups, communities
and activists has emerged to fight its abuses. For instance, the company
stands accused of complicity in or direct violations of environmental,
labor and human rights in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines,
Namibia, Madagascar, the U.S. and Australia, among others.
Novartis is engaged in an aggressive public relations and regulatory
battle to force consumers and farmers to accept genetically engineered
agriculture, without full testing for potential harms and without full
access to information. The behavior of Novartis in the area of genetically
engineered agriculture is diametrically opposed to the precautionary
principle, one of the principles of the Global Compact.—From “Tangled
up in Blue” by TRAC/Corporate Watch
