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viewpoint: code of conduct for businesses
Business 'sees gain in binding standards on human rights'
Guy Dinmore, FT Syndication Service
1/23/2006
WASHINGTON: International companies have responded favourably to calls for binding human rights standards in the corporate sector as evidence mounts that voluntary guidelines are unfair and bad for business, Human Rights Watch said recently.
The global watchdog, launching its annual report in Washington, said multinational executives were privately starting to question the conventional wisdom that self-regulation and codes of conduct were sufficient.
Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch's executive director, told the FT that companies had responded positively to the campaign, launched last year, for a level playing-field of enforceable global standards.
Citing the example of "tainted gold" controlled by warlords in Congo, the organisation said Metalor Technologies and other Swiss refineries had eventually responded to pressure and suspended purchases of gold from networks operating out of Uganda.
"But the halt was only temporary," the report said. "In less than two months, other gold refineries less concerned about their reputation stepped into the void. The trade moved from Switzerland to Dubai."
The gold jewellery industry, following the example of the diamond industry, which has sought to dissociate itself from "blood diamonds", will not be able to tackle irresponsible competitors who will "still play dirty" without enforceable rules, the report advised.
Human Rights Watch recommended that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Develop ment (OECD) follow up the treaty that outlawed bribery by making its corporate social responsibility guidelines binding.
The United Nations, which has already drafted non-binding norms on corporate conduct, could also provide a forum for a universally applicable treaty.
Addressing the state of human rights around the world in 2005, Human Rights Watch also focused on what it called the Bush administration's deliberate adoption of torture and mistreatment of detainees as a policy in its counter-terrorism strategy.
Allies such as the UK and Canada had undermined critical international protections, said the group, while the European Union had shown a lack of leadership over disappearances, secret prisons and abuses by governments in Africa and Asia.
China and Russia, with their crackdowns on domestic opposition and support of authoritarian regimes, had exploited the "leadership void" created by the Bush administration's unique position of being the only government in the world to claim as a matter of policy the right to treat detainees inhumanely, the organisation said.
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