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Global Leadership Group Assembled to Impose Human Rights Standards on Corporations
Category: Global Regulation
Friday, November 7, 2008
John Ruggie, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises has created a Global Leadership Group (GLG) to help him fulfill his mandate to “identify and clarify standards of corporate responsibility and accountability for transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights,” which was renewed by the Human Rights Council in June 2008. The members of the GLG include several individuals who believe that the United Nations and NGOs should monitor transnational corporate activities in light of ambiguous human rights standards and demand costly compliance.
Professor Ruggie established the GLG in late October in order to “provide strategic and substantive advice” for his extended mandate from the Human Rights Council. Specifically, the GLG will help him develop “concrete and practical recommendations on ways to strengthen the fulfillment of the duty of the State to protect all human rights from abuses by or involving transnational corporations and other business enterprises.” The GLG will also assist in “elaborate[ing] further on the scope and content of the corporate responsibility to respect all human rights and to provide concrete guidance to business and other stakeholders.”
The 15 members of the GLG include members of the corporate world, representatives from international organizations, NGO leaders, and human rights advocates. Many GLG members believe that, because corporations are not parties to existing international human rights treaties, a global system must be created for holding transnational corporations accountable for realizing civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.
Among the GLG members are Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations and Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, both of whom are proponents of concrete international norms outlining the responsibilities of transnational corporations in regards to human rights. Souhayr Belhassen, President of the Fédération International des Ligues des Droits de l’Homme (FIDH), is also a member of the group. FIDH’s mission is to advocate for “economic globalization [that is] respectful of human rights” by “actively seek[ing] to ensure the justiciability of economic, social and cultural rights, the responsibility of economic actors, the primacy of Human Rights over trade law and the participation of civil societies in globalsation organisations.”
The GLG corporate representatives include Narayana Murthy, Chairman of the Board and Chief Mentor of Infosys Technologies Limited, who believes that “the real power of money is the power to give it away” and Guy Ryder, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, who has said that “our globalized world requires effective global governance.”
Several UN-affiliated human rights advocates round out the GLG, including Luis Gallegos, former Chairman of the Ad-Hoc Committee on an International Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, Hina Jilani, Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on Human Rights Defenders, and Sonia Picado, presently serving on the United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security, as well as the on the Commission on Human Security.
While most people agree that, when warranted, transnational corporations should be punished for willful and egregious human rights violations, the GLG is likely over time to focus its attention on ways to hold transnational corporations and other businesses, along with States, accountable for funding expansive economic, social, and cultural rights such as the right to health, the right to housing, the right to a clean environment, the right to education, and the right to an adequate standard of living.
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