Many human-rights activists believe that it was their protests at the
annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, a financial company controlled by Warren
Buffett, that prompted the sale of its 11% shareholding in PetroChina. After
all, why else would the investment genius have taken such a bad financial
decision? Although he made a profit of $3.5 billion when he sold the shares in
the Chinese oil company, which activists accuse of indirectly funding the
genocide in Darfur, PetroChina's share price
has since continued to soar.
The role that business plays in promoting—or abusing—human rights has
never been under such scrutiny. As well as Darfur, the uprising in Myanmar has
revived criticism of foreign multinationals operating there, such as oil giants
Chevron and Total. Meanwhile, more than 3,500 companies have signed up to the
United Nations Global Compact, which includes a commitment to uphold the UN
Declaration on Human Rights.
With the wind in their sails, it seems an odd moment for human-rights
activists to fall out about business. Yet that is what has happened. The focus
of the dispute is the work of John Ruggie, the UN secretary-general's special
representative on human rights and transnational corporations. The Global
Compact is thin on detail, and Mr. Ruggie has been asked to write something
stronger for the 60th anniversary of the UN Declaration next year. Earlier this
month, 151 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other activists, including
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, sent an open letter to Mr.
Ruggie, which his supporters see as an attack on their man and his strategy.
The letter, if listened to, “threatens to set back the cause of human
rights in the corporate sector many years”, thundered Sir Geoffrey Chandler—who
until recently ran Amnesty's Business Group in Britain and formerly worked for
Shell, an oil firm—in a letter of his own. Sir Geoffrey says that some of the
151 signatories want to pursue a confrontational approach to business, rather
than engage with companies. That is a shame, he says, since it is “abundantly
clear that if we wish to see human rights prevail in the world, we will not do
so without the positive involvement of companies.”
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