Memorandum submitted by the Business and
Human Rights Resource Centre
The charity I direct (Business & Human Rights
Resource Centre), headquartered in London, has developed an independent,
online hub that pulls together in one place information on this
subject from across the world. Our aim is to encourage a constructive
debate and informed decision-making, and to promote respect for
human rights by business. We cover more than 150 issues in
over 180 countries, and we track reports on the human rights
impacts (positive and negative) of more than 4000 companies.
We have regional researchers based in Hong Kong, India, South
Africa and Ukraine - soon also in Senegal.
We congratulate the Joint Committee on undertaking
this inquiry. This is one of the most important fields of human
rights, and there is much work to be done.
UK ORGANIZATIONS
One advantage you have is that the UK has been
somewhat in the forefront of business & human rights debates,
and there are many NGOs, businesses and others in the UK whose
work and thinking will be helpful to the inquiry.
Ten years ago few NGOs had the private sector
on their radar. Particularly over the past five years a number
of UK-based NGOs have given much attention to business & human
rights issues, including ActionAid, Amnesty International, Anti-Slavery,
CAFOD, Christian Aid, CORE Coalition, Cornerhouse, Environmental
Justice Foundation, Friends of the Earth, Global Witness, Greenpeace,
Human Rights Watch, International Alert, Oxfam, Pesticide Action
Network, Rights & Accountability in Development, Save the
Children, Survival International, War on Want, WWF - and many
others. Labour organizations such as the TUC have done the same.
Corporate responsibility organizations such
as International Business Leaders Forum have done considerable
work on these issues over the years, including producing many
learning tools for business.
UK businesses and business organizations have
become much more engaged in these discussions over recent years.
For example, Barclays, Body Shop and National Grid have taken
part in the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights, a group
of companies working with Mary Robinson and others to operationalise
human rights in there core business. BP developed a human rights
training guide for its managers. Many UK companies participate
in the UN Global Compact. Over half of the FTSE 100 companies
have adopted a formal human rights policy statement - I believe
this is the highest percentage of any country.
CONTINUING CONCERNS
Despite clear progress, there are many challenges,
and while my colleagues and I increasingly post on our website
reports of positive human rights initiatives by business, much
of our time is spent posting reports of alleged abuses by companies.
CIVIL SOCIETY
IN DEVELOPING
COUNTRIES
One of the most important developments over
the past five years has been that NGOs and community groups in
developing countries have been giving much more attention to human
rights issues relating to the private sector. But too often their
voices are left out of debates in Europe and North America. I
hope your inquiry will find ways to include input from those in
developing countries who have been affected by the operations
of UK companies.
THE WORK
OF JOHN
RUGGIE
John Ruggie was appointed in 2005 by Kofi
Annan as Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on
business & human rights. He is a Harvard professor of international
relations who directed the Center for Business and Government
at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and had served as an
Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Professor Ruggie's 28-page 2008 report
starts off with a frank recognition of the problems in this field:
"The root cause of the business and human
rights predicament today lies in the governance gaps created by
globalization. These governance gaps provide the permissive environment
for wrongful acts by companies without adequate sanctioning or
reparation. How to narrow and ultimately bridge the gaps in relation
to human rights is our fundamental challenge."
His report puts forward a three-part framework:
—the State duty to protect against
human rights abuses by business
—the corporate responsibility to respect
human rights
—the need for greater access by victims
to effective remedies
Addendum 2 of his report summarized the
scope and patterns of alleged corporate-related human rights abuse
found in a sample of 320 cases posted on the Business &
Human Rights Resource Centre website from February 2005 to
December 2007. Professor Ruggie noted that all industry sectors
were alleged to impact human rights, and impacts were alleged
to occur in all regions. He found that corporations are alleged
to have impacted the full range of human rights: civil, political,
economic, social and cultural.
The UN Human Rights Council was unanimous in
welcoming Ruggie's framework and in extending Ruggie's mandate
for another three years, asking him to focus now on operationalising
this framework, by providing more concrete content and guidance
for states and companies.
Since being appointed Professor Ruggie has convened
a total of about 15 multi-stakeholder consultations on five
continents and conducted more than 25 research projects—the
reports of these consultations and research projects, and commentaries
by NGOs about John Ruggie's work, should be very useful to your
inquiry. One example of a specialised initiative feeding into
Professor Ruggie is the work being done by Caroline Rees (who
is here today) on non-judicial remedies, ie how various forms
of conciliation and mediation might help resolve conflicts between
business and affected communities.
Two recent comments by John Ruggie make important
points in relation to the government's duty to protect against
human rights abuses by business:
—"Governments should not assume they
are helping business by failing to provide adequate guidance for,
or regulation of, the human rights impact of corporate activities.
On the contrary, the less governments do, the more they increase
reputational and other risks to business."
(John Ruggie's 2008 report to UN Human
Rights Council, 3 Jun 2008, paragraph 22)
—"Governments are the most appropriate
entities to make the difficult balancing decisions required to
reconcile different societal needs. Yet, as I noted earlier, most
governments, whether host or home states, take a relatively narrow
approach to managing the business and human rights agenda. Often
human rights concerns are kept apart from, or heavily discounted
in, other policy domains that directly shape business practices,
including commercial policy, investment policy, securities regulation,
and corporate governance…
Therefore, the human rights policies of states in
relation to business need to be pushed beyond their narrow institutional
confines. Governments need actively to promote a corporate culture
respectful of human rights at home and abroad. And they need to
consider human rights impacts when they sign trade and investment
agreements, and when they provide export credit or investment
guarantees for overseas projects in contexts where the risk of
human rights challenges is known to be high."
(John Ruggie speech at 3rd Annual Responsible
Investment Forum, New York, 12 Jan 2009)
SOME RECENT
INITIATIVES BY
OTHER GOVERNMENTS
CANADA
A Canadian Parliamentary Standing Committee
tabled in 2005 a landmark report on Mining in Developing
Countries and Corporate Social Responsibility. The report recommended
that the Canadian Government move away from its current voluntary
approach to CSR. It called for policies that condition public
assistance for Canadian companies on compliance with international
human rights and environmental standards, including core labour
rights. The report also identified the need for legislation that
holds companies accountable for their actions overseas. That Canadi-an
Parliamentary Committee held public hearings on the subject. They
also held special hearings where they heard from representatives
of victims and affected communities in developing countries—these
special hearings were held in camera in order to ensure the security
of those testifying.
The Canadian Government failed to adopt the
majority of the recommendations put forward by the Parliamentary
Committee, but did commit to hosting a series of national roundtables
with the aim of identifying ways for Canadian companies to meet
or exceed international standards and best practices. The Canadian
Government then sat down with business and civil society to write
a concluding document to the roundtables—eventually the
government pulled out of this process, but it is interesting to
note that that business and civil society continued working together
on this, and agreed to an outcome document: an Advisory Group
report and recommendations to the government issued in March 2007,
which includes summaries of the national roundtables.
Recommendations from that document or from other
Canadian initiatives include calls for the establishment of:
—a Canadian ombudsperson on business &
human rights;
—multi-stakeholder advisory committees
to the government, each committee to include civil society and
business representatives and to focus on one sector (eg extractive
industry, financial industry, IT industry);
—guidelines specifying when the government
would withdraw support from a particular company, including loans
or export credits and guarantees.
DENMARK
Denmark recently adopted a law requiring corporate
social responsibility reporting by its 1100 largest companies.
NETHERLANDS
The Dutch Government has adopted a national
action plan for sustainable public procurement, which provides
that from 2010 environmental and social criteria will apply
to all public procurement. Public bodies will need to ensure that
their purchasing is from companies with supply chains that respect
criteria including core conventions of the International Labour
Organization (relating to freedom of association and collective
bargaining, child labour, forced labour, etc).
In relation to the OECD Guidelines for Multinational
Enterprises, since 2007 the Dutch National Contact Point
has been, as stated on its website, "an independent body,
comprising four independent members from various fields and four
official representatives from different government ministries."
NORWAY
The Norwegian Government has just adopted a
100-page white paper on Corporate Social Responsibility, which
frames the responsibilities and dilemmas of companies. It gives
special attention to subjects such as the challenges involved
in operating in conflict zones, and issues relating to indigenous
peoples. The paper also proposes strengthening the National Contact
Point system of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.
SWITZERLAND
The Swiss Government generally, and the Swiss
Federal Department of Foreign Affairs particularly, have given
much attention to business & human rights issues.
One of the Swiss Government's initiatives, launched
with the International Committee of the Red Cross in 2006, resulted
in the "Montreux Document" on private military and security
companies (PMSCs), finalised in 2008. This document was developed
with the participation of governmental experts from 17 countries
including the United Kingdom. So far 20 countries, including
the UK, have agreed to the Montreux Document.
The Montreux Document is described on the ICRC
website as follows: "The Montreux Document reaffirms the
obligation on States to ensure that private military and security
companies operating in armed conflicts comply with international
humanitarian and human rights law. The document also lists some
70 recommendations, derived from good State practice. These
include verifying the track record of companies and examining
the procedures they use to vet their staff. States should also
take concrete measures to ensure that the personnel of private
military and security companies can be prosecuted when serious
breaches of the law occur."
UNITED STATES
A draft law was introduced in the last session
of the US Congress, the Global Online Freedom Act, which, according
to a 2 May 2008 analysis of the bill by the non-profit
Center for Democracy & Technology, would mandate "that
U.S. Internet companies take certain actions to combat censorship
and protect personal information, or otherwise be subject to criminal
or civil prosecution…or civil lawsuits brought by private
litigants." According to a 1 May 2008 report by
the technology news website Ars Technica, "the Act appears
to be a direct response to the furore over Yahoo's involvement
in outing a number of Chinese dissidents to the government, resulting
in their arrest and imprisonment." The proposed law has not
yet been adopted.
THE REALITY
OF HOW
UK COMPANIES ARE
IMPACTING HUMAN
RIGHTS ON
THE GROUND
The cases mentioned in this section are drawn
from the following charts available on our website covering companies
in all countries:
1. Companies we invited to respond to
concerns in our Updates -- indicating the country and issue, and
whether or not the company responded (Feb 2005 to present)
2. Positive human rights initiatives
by companies featured in our Updates (Feb 2005 to present)
We have also produced two UK-specific charts
that include the cases mentioned below and others concerning companies
headquartered in the UK:
1. UK companies we have invited to respond
to concerns
2. Positive human rights initiatives
by UK companies
First I want to point to examples of positive
initiatives by UK business that we have drawn to international
attention on our website:
— Accenture has been involved in the China
Health Alliance, a partnership against TB and AIDS.
— Anglo American now ties managers' promotions
to their safety record, in an initiative to achieve zero deaths
at its mines.
— Anglo American and Rio Tinto announced
that they would require Chinese joint venture partners in Africa
to pledge adherence to human rights and environmental standards.
— Barclays and Lloyds TSB were among the
top 5 firms in Stonewall's workplace equality index ranking
gay-friendly employers.
— C&A, Marks & Spencer and Tesco
announced that they were taking measures to exclude Uzbek cotton
from their products.
— Diageo was among 10 companies receiving
awards in Nigeria for initiatives to help achieve the UN Millennium
Development Goals.
— G4S recently signed a global agreement
with Union Network International on labour rights.
— GlaxoSmith-Kline's CEO last week pledged
a major new initiative to cut prices of medicines for the poor,
and challenged other pharmaceutical firms to follow suit.
— Tate & Lyle sugar became the largest
UK Fairtrade firm.
— Unilever worked with Oxfam to come up
with a joint report on how Unilever's business impacts poverty
in Indonesia, positively and negatively.
— Vodafone Foundation and UN Foundation
joined in an initiative to improve health in poor countries through
access to data.
— Waitrose has focused on letting farmworkers
make the decisions in social, educational and health initiatives
funded by the company.
One section of our site, the Corporate Legal
Accountability Portal, profiles human rights lawsuits against
companies, including the following ones brought against UK companies
with mixed results:
— Anglo American was sued in South Africa
by former gold miners suffering from silicosis.
— Anglo American, Barclays, BP, NatWest
(part of Royal Bank of Scotland) and Rio Tinto were among the
companies sued in the US for apartheid reparations.
— BP was sued in the US by a group of Inupiat
Eskimos in Alaska, alleging that BP's activities would destroy
their traditional way of life.
— BP was also sued by Colombian farmers
in the English High Court alleging that an oil pipeline caused
severe environmental damage to their lands.
— British American Tobacco was sued in
Nigeria by the federal government and an NGO alleging that it
was marketing its tobacco products to under-aged persons.
— Cape plc was sued in the UK by workers
suffering from asbestos-related disease who had not been given
adequate protective gear.
— Private security firm Erinys was sued
in UK over the shooting of civilians in Iraq in disputed circumstances.
— Rio Tinto was sued in the US court by
residents of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, alleging that the
firm was complicit in human rights abuses by the army, harmed
their health; and engaged in racial discrimination against black
mine workers.
UK lawyers representing victims in these cases
would like to see a review of UK company law so as to make it
simpler for a parent company to be held responsible for the human
rights abuses committed by its subsidiaries overseas and for abuses
committed by foreign companies in respect of which it is a material
shareholder.
Specific concerns have been raised by civil
society about businesses in all sectors and from all countries,
including the UK. When John Ruggie surveyed the nature and scope
of alleged abuses by business in his 2008 report, we were
gratified that he drew the data from our website and said in his
report that our site was "the most comprehensive, objective
information source available".
As for reports of alleged abuses by civil society,
our practice is to invite companies to respond to allegations
before we post the reports on our site or in our Weekly Update,
so that one has access to both perspectives. This response process
sometimes helps encourage constructive engagement between the
complainant and the company. 75% of companies have responded when
we invited them to do so.
I would like to mention some examples of concerns
raised about UK companies over recent years. I should emphasise
that in many of these cases the company has provided some sort
of a response to the allegation, which should also be taken into
account; each allegation and response can be seen in the charts
listed at the beginning of this section.
— Burma Campaign UK said firms providing
insurance to companies operating in Burma support the military
government - the firms named included Atrium Underwriting and
Lloyd's of London.
— Barclays was accused of lending to Zimbabwe
government ministers on an international blacklist.
— Friends of the Earth, Christian Aid and
Action on Smoking & Health said British American Tobacco was
using Corporate Social Responsibility to try to block anti-smoking
initiatives.
— Residents of Douala, Cameroon, accused
Guinness (part of Diageo) of chemical pollution of their neighbourhood
-- green water had flowed from the Guinness factory down a cliff
and into a residential area for several years.
— NGOs said GCM Resources' Phulbari coal
project in Bangladesh threatened the health, water and livelihoods
of local communities.
— A South China Morning Post article
provided evidence that Chinese wig manufacturer Henan Rebecca
used forced prison labour - HSBC was listed among the top shareholders
of Henan Rebecca, holding shares on behalf of clients.
— Bench Marks Foundation said platinum
mines in North West Province of South Africa owned by companies
including Lonmin were putting workers' and communities' health
at risk.
— A mine run by Metals Exploration was
accused of "endangering lives" in Vizcaya, Philippines,
the community claiming there was a risk of a potential landslide
among other concerns.
— A Global Witness report and Financial
Times article raised concerns that an oil-backed loan by banks
(including Royal Bank of Scotland and Standard Chartered) to Angola's
state oil company Sonangol without IMF involvement would perpetuate
corruption and poverty.
— A 2005 ActionAid report said women
working on fruit farms in South Africa supplying Tesco work in
"appalling" conditions - receiving "poverty wages",
exposed to pesticides, living in "dismal housing" and
losing out on benefits.
— Christian Aid, Action for Southern Africa
& Scottish Catholic International Aid called on multinationals
in Zambia (including Vedanta) to give the country a fairer deal
in copper mining contracts, otherwise the government's ability
to fund development, education and health in the country would
be undermined.
CONCLUSION
I will close by wishing you well in this inquiry.
Following Professor Ruggie's 2008 report, the world is watching
to see whether and how governments will move ahead through law,
regulation and other initiatives to fulfil more effectively their
duty to protect against abuses by business, so the timing of this
inquiry could not be better.
Business and Human Rights Resource Centre
May 2009
| 
