Premier Oil has secured the agreement of the Burmese government to provide human rights training for officials within key state departments.
The training is to be channelled through a new body that the UK-based oil exploration and production company is taking the lead in setting up. Although still at an early stage of development, it is envisaged that the body would also assess alleged human rights abuses in Burma (also known as Myanmar) and act as a first port of call for non-governmental organizations who wish to complain about such abuses.
Premier says the initiative is a further response to criticisms by stakeholders that it is not doing enough to further its policy of 'constructive engagement' in the military-led country. The company launched a set of guiding principles that lay out policies on human rights and stakeholder dialogue at the end of last year (EP8, 1999).
Richard Jones, Premier's global social responsibilities manager, said: 'The Burmese government has agreed to Premier helping to provide human rights training to a key group of people in the country. We want to create a credible body that would deal with human rights complaints'.
The planned body would help to raise awareness of international human rights standards and practice among members of several Burmese government departments, including defence, home affairs, justice and attorney general.
'The Burmese government has accepted our intervention each time we have raised human rights concerns, but it has not always been clear what the process is,' Jones said.
He added that a number of international organizations were engaged in dialogue, and a law professor and other human rights specialists were involved in implementing the initiative, which will be announced at a Chatham House conference at the end of this month. They will take part in a four-day seminar in January 2000 to decide how best to proceed.
Jones told EP: 'We are keen to build the country's capacity to address these issues. Having a key group of individuals within departments to whom we can bring human rights cases would help to achieve this, so that instead of going to say, the ambassador, to raise concerns, people would go to this body'.
He stressed that 'changing government is not our role. But we think it is our responsibility to verify and investigate complaints within our area of industry. Our concern is to make sure that in discharging our responsibilities we create the optimum conditions for advancing human rights in Burma.'
The body would also seek to further understanding of international human rights standards and practice, domestic human rights problems, and strategies for raising awareness of human rights.
'We hope that this will be the start of an ongoing programme, and that the creation of this new body will encourage international bodies like the United Nations to accept that there are some issues which Premier can engage upon in a constructive manner,' he said.