Companies now have a powerful international framework that will help them to address their social impacts, argues Sir Geoffrey Chandler
The recent unanimous adoption of the United Nations Norms on the
Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business
Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights by the 26-member Sub-Commission
offers the corporate world a foundation for successful survival, if it
has the wit and wisdom to build on it. That such a survival is under
threat is obvious from the intense public mistrust of business, the
prevalent belief that profit is put before principle, and the evidence
of collateral damage to the social and physical environment inflicted
by company operations, particularly in the developing world.
This distrust has not been diminished by the plethora of voluntary
codes and guidelines that now exist. These have neither led to
consistent action by companies, nor reassured the public. Only a
minority of transnational companies has adhered to the UN Global
Compact, valuable though this has been in creating awareness, and the
OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises have proved an inadequate
mechanism for improving corporate behaviour.
The value of
the Norms to companies is that they distil, in a single comprehensive
and authoritative document, the international human rights principles
applicable to the whole range of business responsibilities. They are
not legally binding, but representing as they do the behaviour expected
of companies by the international community, they are more than
voluntary. They provide a template against which companies can measure
their own codes and act as a mirror for their practice. Their
acceptance by companies would cut through the confused and, for
companies, often self-serving debate on corporate social responsibility
and go far to diminish public distrust.
Opposition to the
Norms seems misconceived. From the International Chamber of Commerce it
is in keeping with a conservative stance which has traditionally
resisted change. From those companies which already endeavour to act on
principles in conformity with the Norms it would be more surprising.
What is asked for lies fully within the legitimate role of business.
The clause on monitoring – admittedly too ambitiously worded – in
principle calls for no more than the independent audit to which all
companies should be subject for the totality of their impact.
Companies have a choice: either of working constructively with the
aspirations of society towards a level playing field, a regaining of
public trust and an eventual regulatory framework which will retain the
dynamism of the market economy within acceptable social boundaries –
something that even the World Business Council for Sustainable
Development now advocates; or, as in the past, fighting a rearguard
action with growing damage to their reputation. The Norms represent an
opportunity, not a threat – an opportunity for companies through their
operations to be part of the solution to the world’s injustice and
inequities, rather than, as now, part of the problem.
Sir
Geoffrey Chandler was founder-chair of Amnesty International UK
Business Group from 1991-2001 and is a former director of Shell
International email [email protected]
