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The prospect of binding norms governing the behaviour of multinational
corporations has been dealt a severe blow by the United Nations special
representative appointed last year to look into the matter.
In an interim 22-page report, Harvard professor John Ruggie takes the view that draft Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations drawn up by a subcommission of the UN Commission on Human Rights three years ago are too problematic to be taken further.
The Norms seek to lay out a framework that, although voluntary in nature, would enjoin corporations to act in a socially responsible manner, with monitoring of their activities and, if they failed to act appropriately, the prospect of legal challenge as the human rights standards became accepted practice.
But Ruggie says that the Norms have become ‘engulfed by [their] own doctrinal excesses’ and adds that ‘even leaving aside the highly contentious though largely symbolic proposal to monitor firms and provide for reparation payments to victims, its exaggerated legal claims and conceptual ambiguities created confusion and doubt even among many mainstream international lawyers’.
The special representative does not reject ‘innovative solutions’ that would lead to ‘the further evolution of international and domestic legal principles in relation to corporations’, but says the ‘flaws’ in the Norms make this more difficult to achieve because they have sparked ‘divisive debate’ that ‘obscures rather than illuminates promising areas of consensus’.
He argues that, in practice, implementation of the Norms would mean that if governments were unable or unwilling to act on human rights then ‘the job would be transferred to corporations’ – a state of affairs he describes as ‘deeply troubling’.
Ruggie, who was UN assistant secretary-general between 1997 and 2001, was appointed special representative to look at issues surrounding the Norms, which created consternation among some, though by no means all, business groups (EP7, issue 5, p7). He will deliver his final report in 2007.
In an interim 22-page report, Harvard professor John Ruggie takes the view that draft Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations drawn up by a subcommission of the UN Commission on Human Rights three years ago are too problematic to be taken further.
The Norms seek to lay out a framework that, although voluntary in nature, would enjoin corporations to act in a socially responsible manner, with monitoring of their activities and, if they failed to act appropriately, the prospect of legal challenge as the human rights standards became accepted practice.
But Ruggie says that the Norms have become ‘engulfed by [their] own doctrinal excesses’ and adds that ‘even leaving aside the highly contentious though largely symbolic proposal to monitor firms and provide for reparation payments to victims, its exaggerated legal claims and conceptual ambiguities created confusion and doubt even among many mainstream international lawyers’.
The special representative does not reject ‘innovative solutions’ that would lead to ‘the further evolution of international and domestic legal principles in relation to corporations’, but says the ‘flaws’ in the Norms make this more difficult to achieve because they have sparked ‘divisive debate’ that ‘obscures rather than illuminates promising areas of consensus’.
He argues that, in practice, implementation of the Norms would mean that if governments were unable or unwilling to act on human rights then ‘the job would be transferred to corporations’ – a state of affairs he describes as ‘deeply troubling’.
Ruggie, who was UN assistant secretary-general between 1997 and 2001, was appointed special representative to look at issues surrounding the Norms, which created consternation among some, though by no means all, business groups (EP7, issue 5, p7). He will deliver his final report in 2007.
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