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About Global Compact

Article published in French on its web site by NOVETHIC, a subsidiary of the Caisse des Dépôts

Translation: UGICT CGT TECHNIP

In January 1999, during the economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland), which is attended yearly by the international leaders in politics and in business, Kofi Annan expressed the idea of a partnership between the United Nations, - of which he is Secretary-General -, Non-Governmental Organizations, and international companies.

Called «Global Compact», this initiative occurred shortly after the anti-globalization protests in Seattle, where the World Trade Organization meeting was held. Its purpose is, according to the formula used by the U.N. Secretary-General, to «unite the powers of markets with the authority of universal ideals», and to take into account the social and environmental impact of globalization.

Global Compact proposes, in the field of the rights of the person, labour and environment rights, subscribing to nine elementary principles written in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in that of the International Labour Organization (ILO), and in the resolutions of the Conference on Environment in Rio (1992) and of the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen (1995). Kofi Annan asks companies to make «the most ambitious effort to establish working relations between UN, the private sector and citizen organizations».

In July 2000, about fifty leaders of multinational corporations committed to support the Global Compact, as well as about thirty NGO’s and social organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the World WildLife Fund, the World Conservation Union or, in France, Entreprises pour l’environnement.

Severe criticism from some NGO’s

«Global Compact, according to UN, is not a code of conduct but a reference and dialogue framework intended to facilitate convergence between the practice of the private sector and universal values». The absence of legal constraints and of control of implementation of commitments made by multinationals has drawn criticism from many NGO’s. Some of them go as far as stigmatizing the risk of corporate opportunism of companies eager to bluepaint their image to conceal their practice of «violation of human and environmental rights».

Thus, the International Federation for Human Rights (IFHR) makes the following remark «the contract is not a formal one, since companies do not have to sign a document requiring them to comply with the principles set out in the text.
It is based on voluntary initiative. Actually, many analyses have demonstrated that private corporations only act for sustained development and human rights when under legal or social constraint, and, basically, when there is a business risk which might affect their operations. Similarly, no external and independent system exists today to check actual compliance with the principles of the Compact by companies, which might consequently consider that it is sufficient to symbolically subscribe to the Global Compact, without actually modifying their current behavior in any material way».

IFHR even goes further in its criticism, since according to it «Global compact materializes a worrying reversal of factors: human rights are only proposed to companies as an optional provision, while human rights should be an obligation for them, since by essence they are the common values of mankind. Through its proposal of the Global Compact, United Nations accepts, or even (by offering its technical assistance) encourages submission of general interest to private interest. Thus it materializes a dramatic resignation of the international community».