Corporate responsbility

Deutsche Welle: Ms. Kusch, you work for Germanwatch and are also involved in the Corporate Accountability (CorA) network, both of which work with a campaign called "Rights for people - Rules for Business." What that that?

Johanna Kusch: It's about people affected by the activities of international corporations. To ensure their rights, we need to set rules for companies. While transnational companies do good things, they are also behind some human rights violations. The problem is, they aren't held liable in the way we think they should be. We think it should be possible to make companies liable for the negative effects of their operations.

We want companies to exercise due diligence and be more transparent. How does the company that makes my mobile phone or my clothes produce these products? How are things actually manufactured? The information I need to be able to answer these questions is often not available.

That means as a consumer, I can't be sure whether human rights were violated in the process of producing the items I buy. But does globalisation threaten human rights in other ways?

Yes, I think it does because business activity has greatly increased in the last few decades and expanded into different countries. But at the same time, state control measures haven't been tightened. So while companies have profited from more opportunity, they are subject to fewer regulations, which often results in violations of human rights.

Take the example of promoting foreign trade, in which the German Federal Government is involved. We don't think it's tied closely enough to human rights issues and that means investments are often made without considering the impact they have in other countries on the people who live there. We see that as a major threat.

Does this mean that the German government supports exports from companies which violate human rights abroad and cause environmental damage? If so, do you have any examples?

Thyssen-Krupp is one. It received money as part of a government foreign trade program, around 200,000 euros. But CSA, Thyssen-Krupp's Brazilian subsidiary firm, was fined heavily by a Brazilian court not too long ago because the subsidiary had broken certain environmental regulations.

So it is possible to turn to national courts? We rarely hear about cases like this or companies getting fined, why?

That's largely down to problems like corruption and a lack of assertiveness on the part of the authorities. Furthermore, the danger of being persecuted or even being on the receiving end of violence makes many of those affected shy away from taking legal action.

Right now, those who are affected can't bring companies before a European court, even if it's a European company's supplier who is behind the human rights violations. That's what the European network for binding corporate responsibility is campaigning for - "Access to the law for persons affected."

How committed are transnational firms in Europe to pushing such regulation through?

Generally company representatives tend to say that they believe in voluntary measures. They say they adhere to the law. The CorA network thinks that's not enough, especially not when we're talking about serious human rights violations.

There are some companies which better understand the importance of making a serious commitment to human rights protections. They think it is part of their core business. But that always stops at a certain point.

What is that point?

Well, a supply chain can be long and made up of many parts. Many of the most serious violations of human rights happen in the third or fourth chain. It's often in the smaller textile plants and locations where electronic items are assembled that human rights are actually violated. Employees often work with toxic chemicals without protective gear, thing like that.

What are the chances that these unfair practices can be improved in the near future?

We see a ray of hope in the fact that debates are actually going on. On a European level we think people are increasingly distancing themselves from the dogma of voluntary company guidelines. Discussions are happening around setting up binding rules.

Professor John Ruggie, the UN's special representative on human rights and transnational corporations, recently published guidelines around human rights and companies. This framework, the so-called Guiding Principles, address the duty of governments to ensure that it that human rights are not breached, even by companies. That means that governments must start taking action.

Author: Ulrike Mast-Kirsching / mm
Editor: Kyle James