[asia-apec 1537] Getting into Bed with Big Business

[BAYAN]

GETTING INTO BED WITH BIG BUSINESS 
The UN is no longer just a joke. It is becoming the villain of the piece 
by George Monbiot 
31 August 2000, Manchester Guardian (UK)

Pity the UN, for it is not powerful enough even to be hated. 

While other global bodies are  widely reviled, the UN has become little more
than a joke. 

Ignored and undermined, its treaties unratified, its fees unpaid, the sometime
saviour of the  world has sunk toward irrelevance. The general assembly is
permanently sidelined. The  security council is heeded only when its decisions
don't interfere with the plans of any of its  members. Next week's Millennium
Summit, the biggest meeting of heads of state in the history of the world, is
likely to be just another scene in an ever more ludicrous pantomime. 

UN officials have long been aware of the problem. They have spent much of the
past 10  years desperately seeking to be taken seriously by the world's great
powers. They are in danger, as a result, of exchanging the role of clown for
the role of villain. 
The UN's metamorphosis began at the Earth Summit in 1992. The UN Centre on
Transnational Corporations, which tried to help weak nations to protect
themselves from predatory companies, had recommended that businesses should be
internationally regulated. The UN refused to circulate its suggestions.
Instead
the summit adopted the proposals of a very different organisation: the
Business
Council for Sustainable Development, composed of the chief executives of big
corporations.

Unsurprisingly, the council had recommended that companies should regulate
themselves. In 1993, the UNCTC  was dissolved. 
In June 1997, the president of the general assembly announced that
corporations
would be given a formal role in UN decision-making. Kofi Annan, the UN
secretary general, suggested  that he would like to see more opportunities for
companies - rather than governments or the UN - to set global standards. 

At the beginning of 1998, the UN Conference on Trade and Development revealed
that it was working with the International Chamber of Commerce to help
developing countries "formulate competition and consumer protection law"
and to
facilitate trade. The UN, which until a few  years before had sought to defend
poor countries from big business, would now be helping  big business to
overcome the resistance of poor countries. The ICC repaid the favour by asking
the world's richest nations to give the UN more money. 

In January 1999, Mr Annan launched a new agency, called the Business
Humanitarian  Forum. It would be jointly chaired by the UN High
Commissioner on
Refugees and the  president of a company called Unocal. Unocal was, at the
time, the only major US company still operating in Burma. It was helping the
Burmese government to build a  massive gas pipeline, during the
construction of
which Burmese soldiers tortured and killed  local people. "The business
community," Annan explained to Unocal, Nestle, Rio Tinto and  the other
members
of the new forum, "is fast becoming one of the UN's most important allies 
That
is why the organisation's doors are open to you as never before." 

Two months later, a leaked memo revealed that the UN Development Programme
had 
accepted $50,000 from each of 11 giant corporations. In return, Nike, Rio
Tinto, Shell, BP,  Novartis, ABB, Dow Chemical and the other companies would
gain privileged access to UNDP offices, acquiring, in the agency's words, "a
new and unique vehicle for market development activities", as well as
"worldwide recognition for their cooperation with the UN". 

The UNDP would develop a special UN logo which the companies could put on
their  products.  After fierce campaigning by human rights groups, this scheme
was suspended. But in July  this year, Mr Annan launched a far more ambitious
partnership, a "global compact" with 50 of the world's biggest and most
controversial corporations. The companies promised to respect their workers
and
the nvironment. This, Annan told them, would "safeguard open markets while at
the same time creating a human face for the global economy". The firms  which
signed his compact would be better placed to deal with pressure from
single-issue  groups". Again, they would be allowed to use the UN's logo. But
there would be no binding  commitments, and no external assessment of how well
they were doing. 

The UN, in other words, appears to be turning itself into an enforcement
agency
for the  global economy, helping western companies to penetrate new markets
while avoiding the regulations which would be the only effective means of
holding them to account. By making  peace with power, the UN is declaring war
upon the powerless.  

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000 

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