A corporate social responsibility Q&A
Clare 8 May 2008, 03:40PM
What international guidelines and organisations have been established to address corporate social responsibility?
These include the United Nations Norms, the United Nations Global Compact and a multi-stakeholder initiative.
What are the United Nations Norms?
The UN Norms set out the human rights responsibilities of businesses. They are a benchmark against which governments and corporations can determine whether their activities meet human rights standards. They do not create new legal obligations, but highlight existing obligations.
What areas do the UN Norms focus on?
The key provisions include non-discrimination; protection of civilians and laws of war; use of security forces; workers’ rights; corruption; consumer protection and human rights; economic, social and cultural rights; human rights and the environment; Indigenous peoples’ rights.
What is the United Nations Global Compact?
The Global Compact brings together non-government organisations (NGO’s), such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace and Action Aid, U.N agencies, major companies, labour and civil society to address concerns such as the environment, human rights and transparency in the context of globalisation.
What are the two most important human rights responsibilities of businesses under the Global Compact?
The UN Global Compact says “businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights” and they should make sure they’re not complicit in human rights abuses.
What is the multi-stakeholder initiative?
Multi-stakeholder initiatives have been set up in a number of industries and bring experts in the field, including governments, NGO’s and corporations, together in a round table environment.
Amnesty International recently joined a multi-stakeholder initiative with companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!. The group is involved in discussion about company practices, censorship and human rights abuses in China.
Have Internet service providers in China complied with their own values and principles, which they claim to do business by?
Yahoo! says it believes “the Internet is built on openness, from information access to creative expression”. Google says it "emphasised an atmosphere of creativity and challenge, which has helped us provide unbiased, accurate and free access to information".
It is ironic that these companies whose existence depends on freedom of information and expression have taken on the role of censor, even in cases where the Chinese Government makes no specific demands for them to do so. While some of these companies say they censor under pressure or are only following local regulations, there appears to have been little effort to resist demands or pressures from the Chinese Government to censor.
Is there a mismatch between the values that companies like Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft say they operate by and their actual business actions?
Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google claim to be ethically responsible companies and have utilised their principles to create codes of conduct that have secured investment, recruited talent and attracted customers.
All three companies admit to censoring and altering search results in some way or hampering access to certain sites.
A defence used by all three companies is a need to comply with local law, however none of these companies have been willing or able to specify precisely which laws and legal processes it has been obliged to follow.
How could companies deal with pressure from the Chinese Government to comply with censorship requests?
The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman has declared that foreign Internet companies must follow Chinese law. It follows that Internet companies have the right to request clear and transparent legal procedures before agreeing to removal or censoring of any content so they can be clear about what laws they are being asked to follow.
For example the companies should ask the relevant Chinese government agency to designate a point of contact on content censorship issues. Further, they should insist on documentation of content-related requests before filtering occurs.
What other recommendations have been made for Internet service providers operating in China about complying with their legal obligations?
Options include maximizing how they protect user data, for example by not hosting personally-identifying user data in Chinese jurisdictions and retaining as little user data as possible for the shortest amount of time possible.
Respecting and upholding a rights-based rule of law by not initiating censorship that has not been specifically ordered in writing by the Chinese government via a legally binding process; and not complying with oral, undocumented requests for censorship.
Other recommendations include keeping documentation of exactly what terms and web addresses they are asked to censor by the Chinese government and reporting annually to the international community about what they have done.
Human Rights Watch say none of these goals are inconsistent with those recently voiced by Chinese government officials.
Have any individuals and/or organisations that invest in these Internet corporations voiced their opinions on this issue?
In November 2005, 25 US, Canadian, Australian, and European investment funds – which manage assets worth about US$21 billion – signed a pledge that “respect for freedom of expression is a factor we consider in assessing a company’s social performance”. They committed to “monitor the activities of Internet sector companies in repressive countries to evaluate their impact on access to news and information”.
The companies also pledged to support shareholder resolutions at company annual meetings “favorable to freedom of expression,” to call on Internet businesses to implement public ethical codes aimed at upholding freedom of speech worldwide.
Although Amnesty does not rank businesses, the UK’s Ethical Investment Association conducted a survey to find out which companies are currently the best corporate social responsibility performers.
- AstraZeneca UK
- Bayer Germany
- Degussa Germany
- ICI UK
- Norsk Hydro Norway
- BASF Germany
- Henkel Germany
- Umicore Belgium
- Diageo UK
- BT Group UK
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