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This month the United Nations reconsiders the future of a document that sets out accepted behaviour for multinationals. EP looks at what is likely to happen
Agreement is rarely achieved in the bat of an eyelid at the United Nations, and it looks as if progress on finalizing a set of UN norms on corporate behaviour will conform to type.
It took five years for a subcommission of the UN Commission on Human Rights to produce a draft of the Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights, setting out companies’ basic human rights obligations. It may take even longer to reach a consensus on their final shape, if indeed one is reached at all.
Consideration of the next step has already been delayed by a year, and when the UNCHR assembles for its annual meeting in Geneva from 14 March to 22 April, further procrastination is likely.
At its 2004 session, the UNCHR commissioned a report from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on how the norms might be implemented and looking at any ‘outstanding issues’. It also set in train a consultation that attracted around 100 submissions and ended in autumn 2004.
The resulting report was to have been published in early February as a basis for discussion at the Geneva meeting. But as EP went to press the document was still not publicly available.
The delay may simply be due to internal bureaucracy, but it might also reflect how thorny the issue has become. While the norms have generally been welcomed by civil society as a useful step towards a single set of recognized standards for multinationals to follow, their opponents – represented by the UK’s Confederation of British Industry and, significantly, the US government – feel this would be too prescriptive. The UNCHR itself has been at pains to confirm ‘the importance and priority’ it accords to the topic. But the decision of the 2004 meeting effectively parked the norms in a side street, and it is clear the commission will have difficulty moving them onto the main road again. The norms were only saved from being ditched altogether last year by a compromise resolution put forward by the governments of 13 countries, led by the UK, that opposed a US government proposal to abandon them entirely.
Much now depends on the relationship between the US and UK governments. In its consultation statement to the commission, the UK says the norms ‘could be an opportunity to work towards a universally accepted collation and clarification of the minimum standards of behaviour expected of companies with regard to human rights’ and that it ‘looks forward to ... moving the process forward’ at the spring session.
By contrast, the US government says the norms should not have been created in the first place, as the subcommission had ‘no authority’ to do so, and that detailed discussion is therefore irrelevant. It maintains that ‘attempts to craft norms of this nature dangerously shift the focus of accountability for human rights violations away from states and toward private actors’.
One source close to the process told EP: ‘The debate, both within the commission and outside, really is very polarized. But the UK government will be the leader in deciding how things should proceed. It will essentially say: “Let’s get this proposal moving along, take what’s good from it, and find a compromise.” If [the UK government] can work on the US, we can expect there to be a compromise.’
The UK will be supported by a number of other governments, notably fellow European ones, but any thoughts of moving the process along in dramatic fashion have long since been jettisoned by the norm’s backers.
Even Amnesty International has restricted its aspirations for the 2005 session to calling for a resolution that ‘ensures the continuation of the consultation process initiated in 2004’. So while most onlookers appear to believe it highly unlikely the norms will simply be dumped, because this would embarrass governments, the expectation is of some kind of fudge to keep them within the commission’s machinery but not at the forefront of its deliberations.
The most likely outcome is an expert working group to examine the principles behind the norms, but not their substance, possibly linked to further consultation with a distant closing date that draws in a greater number of interested parties from developing countries.
‘The most that can be realistically expected at the next session is a step forward in the process of consultation and towards getting some kind of international consensus,’ said EP’s source, who did not wish to be named. ‘There are documents at the UN that took 20 years to adopt, so these things take time.’
The present failure of the norms to advance leaves UN policy in this field in disarray. With the Global Compact under fire from various quarters and little positive news on other fronts, apart from the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative, any further lack of progress leaves a question mark hanging over what the UN can realistically contribute to CSR.
Agreement is rarely achieved in the bat of an eyelid at the United Nations, and it looks as if progress on finalizing a set of UN norms on corporate behaviour will conform to type.
It took five years for a subcommission of the UN Commission on Human Rights to produce a draft of the Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights, setting out companies’ basic human rights obligations. It may take even longer to reach a consensus on their final shape, if indeed one is reached at all.
Consideration of the next step has already been delayed by a year, and when the UNCHR assembles for its annual meeting in Geneva from 14 March to 22 April, further procrastination is likely.
At its 2004 session, the UNCHR commissioned a report from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on how the norms might be implemented and looking at any ‘outstanding issues’. It also set in train a consultation that attracted around 100 submissions and ended in autumn 2004.
The resulting report was to have been published in early February as a basis for discussion at the Geneva meeting. But as EP went to press the document was still not publicly available.
The delay may simply be due to internal bureaucracy, but it might also reflect how thorny the issue has become. While the norms have generally been welcomed by civil society as a useful step towards a single set of recognized standards for multinationals to follow, their opponents – represented by the UK’s Confederation of British Industry and, significantly, the US government – feel this would be too prescriptive. The UNCHR itself has been at pains to confirm ‘the importance and priority’ it accords to the topic. But the decision of the 2004 meeting effectively parked the norms in a side street, and it is clear the commission will have difficulty moving them onto the main road again. The norms were only saved from being ditched altogether last year by a compromise resolution put forward by the governments of 13 countries, led by the UK, that opposed a US government proposal to abandon them entirely.
Much now depends on the relationship between the US and UK governments. In its consultation statement to the commission, the UK says the norms ‘could be an opportunity to work towards a universally accepted collation and clarification of the minimum standards of behaviour expected of companies with regard to human rights’ and that it ‘looks forward to ... moving the process forward’ at the spring session.
By contrast, the US government says the norms should not have been created in the first place, as the subcommission had ‘no authority’ to do so, and that detailed discussion is therefore irrelevant. It maintains that ‘attempts to craft norms of this nature dangerously shift the focus of accountability for human rights violations away from states and toward private actors’.
One source close to the process told EP: ‘The debate, both within the commission and outside, really is very polarized. But the UK government will be the leader in deciding how things should proceed. It will essentially say: “Let’s get this proposal moving along, take what’s good from it, and find a compromise.” If [the UK government] can work on the US, we can expect there to be a compromise.’
The UK will be supported by a number of other governments, notably fellow European ones, but any thoughts of moving the process along in dramatic fashion have long since been jettisoned by the norm’s backers.
Even Amnesty International has restricted its aspirations for the 2005 session to calling for a resolution that ‘ensures the continuation of the consultation process initiated in 2004’. So while most onlookers appear to believe it highly unlikely the norms will simply be dumped, because this would embarrass governments, the expectation is of some kind of fudge to keep them within the commission’s machinery but not at the forefront of its deliberations.
The most likely outcome is an expert working group to examine the principles behind the norms, but not their substance, possibly linked to further consultation with a distant closing date that draws in a greater number of interested parties from developing countries.
‘The most that can be realistically expected at the next session is a step forward in the process of consultation and towards getting some kind of international consensus,’ said EP’s source, who did not wish to be named. ‘There are documents at the UN that took 20 years to adopt, so these things take time.’
The present failure of the norms to advance leaves UN policy in this field in disarray. With the Global Compact under fire from various quarters and little positive news on other fronts, apart from the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative, any further lack of progress leaves a question mark hanging over what the UN can realistically contribute to CSR.
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