Baroni, Antoinette --- "Business and Human Rights, Human Rights, Corporate Responsibility - A Dialogue (eds) Stuart Rees and Shelley Wright (Pluto Press, Sydney, 2000)" [2001] AUJlHRights 10; (2001) 7(1) Australian Journal of Human Rights 191

Business and Human Rights
An interdisciplinary discussion held at Harvard Law School in December 1997,
Human Rights Program, 1999

Human Rights, Corporate Responsibility - A dialogue
(eds) Stuart Rees and Shelley Wright
(Pluto Press, Sydney, 2000)

Antoinette Baroni [*]

In the struggle towards universal acceptance that human rights is an integral part of every aspect of the human experience, encompassing all human endeavour and therefore central to all facets of economic activity, these two publications of conference proceedings, one held at Harvard Law School in 1997 and one at the University of Sydney the same year, light some significant beacons. However they also highlight some of the more intractable areas of tension between human rights activists and economic rationalists.

Now, one would like to live the eternal dream that John Lennon so eloquently presented to us in his song-poem ‘Imagine’ and to see all humankind use a positive framework of the greater good to inform their frenetic economic activity. Sadly, as we know too well, this is not the case. Even concepts of the words ‘basic’, and ‘rights’ are contested from context to context and culture to culture.

In order to progress the cause of human rights in the global economy, it is essential to ensure that the message of the real universality of human rights is clearly understood and accepted by all - corporations, governments, and global public opinion.

In his keynote address to the November 1997 conference on Corporate Success and Human Rights, hosted by the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney from which the book – Human Rights, Corporate Responsibility springs, Bob Hawke put the essence of the problem:

Among men and women of goodwill there is no argument about the twin objectives of attaining human rights as part of good business practice.... The question, rather, is one of means, as the controversies are not only about the meaning of human rights but also about how best to attain them.

From a Western viewpoint, to judge how far we have moved away from a Renaissance vision of a world which firmly placed humanity at the centre of all human activity, and the corresponding rights that flow from this philosophical position, we only have to listen to the language of the apologists for the global economy. They displace humanity as the focus of human endeavour and replace it with a mechanical construct – ‘the Market’. In this paradigm, responsibility is diluted and apologists justify every violation of rights by hollow explanations such as market forces, market corrections, the demands of the market and so forth. These nebulous and yet all encompassing concepts have enabled corporations and governments to perceive the greater good as subject to, and a direct consequence of, ‘the Market’.

Thus human beings who, after all, are the actors in corporations and governments, may feel justified in sacrificing the immediate good and are able to justify even the most blatant human rights abuses by hiding behind the construct of the market in one way or another. Good people are made to do bad things in the name of the corporation, or in the name of patriotism and the long term achievement of corporate and national goals. To quote again from a Chapter in Human Rights, Corporate Responsibility which discusses Managerialism and Human Rights:

Cruelty is not committed by cruel individuals, but by ordinary men and women trying to acquit themselves well of their ordinary duties. (Bauman 1989:153)

This mental framework of the end justifying the means informs the concept of trickle-down capitalism, now even embraced by such giant emerging economies as the People’s Republic of China. It is a framework that also leaves wide open the ready made excuses for human rights abuses.

It is this global concept of market capitalism that displaces humanity from the centre of the frame and put it at the service of the market and thus of the corporations that are the controlling force of this market.

For many involved in research in this area, this vital point makes the discussion of Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights the most important dialogue on the planet right now. Human rights activists must convince Corporations, and in some cases Governments, that the greater good of humanity is the prime purpose of all human activity and therefore that corporate responsibility for human rights is not negotiable. Further, that the individual Corporation and the individual Government are responsible for that section of humanity that is directly or indirectly affected by their governance decisions.

So what do these two conference proceedings tell us about the progress of this dialogue between human rights activists on the one hand and corporations and governments on the other? One could say that at least there is a dialogue - even if for a large part of the proceedings it may seem like a dialogue of the deaf, with a certain measure of posturing on one side and an equal amount of lip service on the other.

It becomes very clear in reading both publications that appeals to the humanist principle outlined above are given very little credence by Corporations. Business can obfuscate the core principle of the centrality of human rights to all human activity by pointing out compelling ideas such as non-interference in domestic issues in host sovereign nations, or by appealing to the hackneyed excuse that the business of business is business, or gravely warning of the dire consequences of interference with such culturally established customs as the exploitation of women and children in certain countries

But if business is prepared to dialogue, this in itself is a measure of progress. In both conferences, corporations were represented at a very high level and in some instances even given the dubious epithet of ‘enlightened’ by some participants. In some cases, one can note that there is real engagement with the issues, not just lip service to the concepts, or mantras of corporate realism versus unrealistic bleeding hearts. One still gets a distinct whiff of lip service wafting through some of the apologists for the Market in both publications.

Perhaps the real hope for progress is the reason why business is prepared to dialogue. Whilst it is doubtless true that the managers of some corporations fit the Hawke definition of ‘men and women of goodwill’ and are obviously struggling to reconcile their corporate reality with their humanist principles, others are now more than willing to dialogue for different reasons. Some of the corporate participants represent companies, such as Reebok, who have felt the blowtorch of public opinion demolish their ‘bottom line’ as Spar posited in her seminal article on that subject. Their very participation in dialogue and in effecting real change in their corporate governance strategies to embrace positive human rights programs gives enormous grounds for hope and justifies the global grass roots campaigns of NGO’s and global consumer organizations.

However enlightened some corporations may be, the clear message from both these publications is that corporate actors in the global economy will act to enhance human rights in the workplace and in the environment when governments enforce appropriate domestic labour and environmental protection laws or when global legal instruments are framed with enforceable sanctions.

Activists and academics engaging in the dialogue at the Harvard Law School Conference included such prominent figures as Deborah Spar, Dani Rodrik and Henry Steiner. The sense that the USA was the centre of the global economy certainly shone through the Harvard conference proceedings, but the recognition of their primacy in global affairs and the commitment to engaging business in the struggle for human rights was heartening.

Prominent national figures such as Frank Brennan, Bob Hawke, and Chris Sidoti at the Sydney University Conference lent weight to discussions on the struggle to ensure indigenous people’s rights in development, practical corporate strategies for promotion of human rights in the workplace both within Australia and globally, with a definite focus on Australian business engagement in Asia

The gulf between the position of activists and academics on the one hand and the corporate actors on the other remains, but every dialogue such as those reported in these publications engages the decision makers and serves as positive progress markers along the road to achieving the goal of recognition and enforcement of human rights in business.

These publications make important reading precisely because they are reporting such dialogues in print. We are not simply being presented with theoretical arguments from both sides, but a recorded interaction especially in the case of the Harvard discussions. They also represent steps forward in corporate engagement with, and recognition of, the increasing centrality of human rights in matters economic.

However, the conclusion one must inevitably draw after reading both proceedings is that activists are still going to have to apply liberal doses of the Spar blowtorch to the corporate bottom line before real change in corporate governance will be forthcoming. Self-regulating codes of corporate conduct alone will not achieve the human rights goals necessary to deliver outcomes with justice in the global economy. Framers of corporate governance legislation both domestic and global (and eventually this will be possible) must also ensure that enforceable sanctions accompany legislation. Dialogues are in the end just that - a presentation of positions with a hope that both sides are listening with open minds and ears, and that engagement really does happen rather than, as suggested earlier in this review - partly real dialogue and engagement with the reality and gravity of the situation and partly indulging in a dialogue of the deaf.

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[*] Bas, MA (UNSW). Doctoral Candidate, School of Politics and International Relations, UNSW, researching business and labour rights.