Empresas y Derechos Humanos: La FIDH pide a la comunidad internacional reforzar las normas y garantizar reparación

19 de junio de 2014

Source: FIDH

La FIDH publica hoy un briefing llamando a la comunidad internacional a adoptar medidas y establecer un grupo de trabajo intergubernamental abierto con el mandato de explorar las opciones para mejorar los estándares de protección y garantizar mecanismos de reparación efectiva disponibles. El informe se basa en cinco estudios de caso reales en Camboya, Brasil, Libia, la República Democrática del Congo y el Territorio Palestino Ocupado. Su evaluación permite identificar deficiencias en los Principios Rectores de las Naciones Unidas sobre Empresas y Derechos Humanos (UNGPs), las dificultades que surgen en su aplicación y las lagunas de protección que deben ser cerradas.

El acceso a la justicia sigue siendo para las víctimas una ilusión en demasiados casos, y en algunos países se ha dificultado tras recientes reformas o decisiones judiciales. Los titulares de derechos siguen enfrentándose a enormes desafíos y en algunos casos la situación ha empeorado.

"Sólo en 2013, decenas de defensores de los derechos humanos de todos los continentes por la defensa de las comunidades locales y el medio ambiente han puesto en riesgo sus vidas, siendo acosados ​​e incluso asesinados en algunos casos." Debbie Stothard, FIDH Secretario General y Coordinador de Altsean - Birmania.

Estos estudios de casos ilustran que existen límites importantes a los UNGPs, en particular su carácter voluntario y las interpretaciones divergentes de las partes interesadas, la falta de una orientación sólida sobre las medidas legislativas y de políticas que deben adoptar los Estados, y más importante, sobre los obstáculos para acceder a la justicia y la obtención de reparación.

"A los afectados por abusos contra los derechos humanos relacionados con las empresas a menudo se les niega un recurso, a pesar de los esfuerzos a nivel nacional y regional. Para lograr un progreso real y poner fin a estos daños, la FIDH hace un llamamiento a la acción a nivel internacional con el objetivo de aclarar y codificar las obligaciones existentes y garantizar una reparación por los abusos corporativos."Katherine Gallagher, Vicepresidente de la FIDH y abogado principal en el Centro para los Derechos Constitucionales (CCR).

***

Sinopsis de los estudios de caso

En Camboya, mientras que el sector de la confección está sumido en continuas violaciones de derechos humanos y los trabajadores textiles fueron violentamente reprimidos durante las huelgas para exigir un salario digno, las fábricas camboyanas siguen ignorando los derechos de los trabajadores y las marcas globales se benefician de mano de obra barata.

En Brasil, la minera Vale no actúa con la debida diligencia y sigue sin abordar el impacto ambiental y el impacto en la salud causado por sus socios comerciales y sus propias actividades. Las comunidades de California y Piquiá de Baixo todavía están a la espera de recibir una reparación adecuada.

El régimen de Gaddafi en Libia utilizó supuestamente el equipo de vigilancia de comunicaciones suministrado por la empresa francesa Amesys para espiar, y, posteriormente, detener, encarcelar , torturar y a sus oponentes. El caso pone de manifiesto las barreras al acceso a la justicia a raíz de una denuncia penal presentada por la FIDH y la LDH por la presunta complicidad de Amesys en violaciones graves de los derechos humanos.

En la República Democrática del Congo, 500 aldeanos cuyas viviendas fueron destruidas por la empresa minera CMSK siguen esperando recibir una indemnización. Hasta 2012 , Groupe Forrest International, con sede en Bélgica, tuvo participaciones en CMSK través de su filial EGMF. La compañía continúa negando toda responsabilidad en las demoliciones. La mediación intentada por el Punto Nacional de Contacto belga de la OCDE fracasó y los aldeanos no obtuvieron compensación.

Por beneficiase directamente de la apropiación y explotación de tierra palestina y los recursos naturales del Mar Muerto en los Territorios Palestinos Ocupados, la compañía de cosméticos Ahava puede ser considerado autor principal de crimen de guerra de saqueo. Israel ha fracasado en prevenir y perseguir el saqueo, y lo ha facilitado otorgando licencias a Ahava y beneficios financieros a los colonos que son dueños de casi la mitad de las acciones de la compañía. 

PDF: Empresas y Derechos Humanos: Reforzar Normas y Garantizar Reparación

Raul Zibechi: Mining and Colonialism in Brazil’s Giant Carajás Project

31 / May / 2014
Source: Americas Program

Started during the military dictatorship, the Carajás Project has, in three decades, made ​​Brazil a mining power. Social movements, ecclesial groups and human rights institutions are assessing the impacts, while Vale, the second largest mining company in the world, prepares to double iron production in the coming years.

“It’s like a trip back in time,” explains Santiago Machado Aráoz, an anti-mining activist from Andalgalá in Catamarca, when asked about the reality of Piquiá, the industrial neighborhood in Açailandia contaminated by the plants that produce cast iron from Carajás iron ore.

“Cobbled streets, simple wood houses, the loud passing of the train, and permanent iron dust make up the landscape–gray by day, and a smoky reddish by night, because they operate 24 hours a day.”

Santiago was one of the hundreds of participants in the international seminar, “Carajás, 30 Years” in São Luis, the capital of Brazil’s poorest state, Maranhao, organized by an alliance between the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), the Justice on the Rails Network (Red Justiça Nos Trilhos, an initiative of the Comboni Missionaries), the Carajás Forum, Cáritas, and the Development, Modernity, and Environment Group at the Federal University of Maranhão.

About a thousand people attended the seminar, held May 5-9, from several Brazilian states and a dozen countries where there are mining activities. Representatives from anti-mining organizations in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Colombia, activists from Canada and Germany made presentations and “The Fight of the People against the Iron Dragon,” a film by local filmmaker Murilo Santos was shown.

Critics of the Grand Carajás Project, initiated by the military dictatorship in 1982, focused on Piquiá plant pollution and the damage caused by the train when it crosses more than one hundred villages, considered the largest mining-based railway in the world. Unlike other mining ventures, the social damages here are even worse than the environmental damages, although the environmental impact affects the Amazon rainforest, a sensitive and fragile ecosystem.

The people directly affected by Vale–peasant farmers, indigenous peoples, and the inhabitants of polluted communities like Açailandia and Piquiá–played a prominent role in the conference. The week culminated in a march from the university to the government palace in the historical downtown area. There, they harshly criticized Governor Roseana Sarney–a member of the local oligarchy that has held the state for many decades.

An imperial project

A US Steel geologist discovered the richest mineral area and the largest iron reservoir in the world in 1962–900,000 square kilometers, 10% of Brazil’s land surface through which the Tocantins, Araguaia and Xingú rivers of the Amazon flow. The Brazilian government entered into a dispute with the US multinational to make sure the resulting wealth stayed in the country, Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (Vale), the state mining company founded in 1942 by the Getúlio Vargas government, paid a huge sum to U.S. Steel for a mining monopoly.

Seven decades later, Vale is the second largest mining entity in the world, with 120,000 employees and USD $60 billion in annual invoices. It operates in twenty countries and is among the twenty largest companies in the world. The company has 10,000 kilometers of railways and nine of its own ports in Brazil alone, through which it exports iron ore to Asia. China is Vale’s prime customer. China consumes 5% of the energy produced in Brazil.

The Fernando Henrique Cardoso government privatized Vale in 1997, in a controversial process. Although it is formally a private company, the state has a “golden share” through which it can block decisions. The Board of Directors is controlled by Valepar SA, where Previ (the pension fund of the employees of state-owned Banco do Brasil) holds 53% of capital with voting rights. The Brazilian Development Band (BNDES) has another 10%. This allows the government to influence, either directly or through trade unions, the multinational’s presidential elections and the orientation of its investments.

Vale’s crown jewel is the Carajás Project. Its iron ore has the highest degree of purity in the world, and in such quantity that it can be extracted for another 250 years at current rates. The Carajás Project complex includes the mine, a 900-kilometer railway, and a port at São Luis. To supply the mine and other aluminum projects in the Amazon with power, the construction of the Tucuruí hydroelectric plant– with a capacity of 8,300 megawatts–was necessary.

Of the 100 million tons of iron Vale exports each year, some 75 million are taken from the Carajás mine. Drills extract the ore that is lifted by excavators to trucks capable of carrying up to 400-ton loads. From there, it goes to the plants that grind the ore, until it arrives at the railcars via a network of conveyor belts. The mining train has 330 cars, four locomotives, and a length of nearly four kilometers. The Valemax, 360-meter long cargo boats of up to 400,000 ton built especially to transport iron, await the train at the port. Vale has commissioned 35 of these mega-ships.

Sacrifice zones

“The company’s presence was naturalized, and now there is no way to think about getting rid of it. The train has a continuous presence and disrupts daily life,” Santiago says. The worst impacts come from the company’s steel plants, five in Açailandia and two in Piquiá. With just 380 families, the community nestled in this industrial area is not strong enough to protest, although with support from the landless movement and local priests several hundred people blocked the railway in December 2011.

“After being here for awhile, my face and arms started to itch. It’s the steel dust. The company does not have a dump or a slagheap, but just keep pulling it out there.” Santiago does the math. He visited three houses: one family had a 15 year-old girl with deformities, in the second, a 32 year-old woman had died of cancer, in the third, a member of the family had lung cancer.

Joselina, an elegant woman in her 40s, attends graduate school in São Luis but her entire family is in Piquiá. She cannot hide her sadness over the death of her little cousin, ten years old. He was burned to death when he fell into the waste from the plants. “Piquiá is surrounded by steel plants, cement factories, and the Vale train, and trucks carrying iron ore and coal pass through on the roads all the time.”

“There is so much oppression that all people want is to leave,” Santiago notes. The companies bought some property for the people so they could move to a less bleak and polluted place, and last year the Ministry of Cities approved an urban housing project for them to re-settle. Problems will continue along the 900 kilometers of the railway that Vale plans to double in a few years to boost exports. The goal is to go from 100 to 230 million tons of iron ore.

Each time the train stops, it forms a four-kilometer wall that local people cannot cross. Perhaps that’s why Santiago compares Açailandia to Macondo. “It beats fiction. There are dead fish in all of the rivers, everything is black or white because the iron dust strips the color away from people and plants.” This image is reinforced every time the train stops at a village and hundreds of people rush to sell anything for a few reais.

The worst company in the world

Father Dario Bossi of the Comboni Missionary coordinates the Justice on the Rails Network and lives in Piquiá. He states, “In thirty years, iron exploitation leaves deforested areas, slave labor, migration and has torn apart the identification of the communities with their territories. It has also left land conflicts, pollution, urban disorganization, and violence due to the intense exodus of people in search of work, the most affected being of indigenous or African descent.”

“Decades ago, caravans of impoverished people from the Northeast came to Maranhão– cheap labor for large development projects and extensive plantation farming,” Bossi states [1]. Towns near the mine have experienced geometric growth. Marabá had a population of 14,000 in 1960; today it has 250,000. Parauapebas, where the railway begins, had 20,000 people when the Carajás project started in 1980; today it nears 200,000. Intense migration, poverty, and violence go hand in hand.

Bossi recalls “unemployment is higher in the municipalities that the railway passes through–21 of those 27 municipalities have a human development index at less than half the average for the state of Maranhão.”

The words “poverty,” “dictatorship,” and “colonialism” recur again and again in the seminar on Vale. In 2011, it received an “award” for being the worst company in the world. The annual “Public Eye People’s Award”, created by NGOs Greenpeace and Berne Declaration was granted to Vale for its “70-year history sullied by repeated human rights violations, inhumane labor conditions, pillage of public assets, and cruel exploitation of nature “[2]. That year, votes for Vale even exceeded those for Japan’s largest electricity company, Tepco, responsible for the Fukushima disaster.

Brazil is currently debating a new mining code that would regulate mining activity through 2030. So far the National Mining Plan’s only concession is an increase in royalties.

Father Bossi notes, “The project has been decided from above, without dialogue with communities and without a plan for integrating socio-economic and environmental management. It is at the exclusive service of the mining and iron and steel industry”. [3]

The National Committee in Defense of Territories Against Mining (Comitê Nacional em Defensa dos Territórios Frente a Mineração), composed of eleven movements and organizations, issued a statement denouncing a conflict of interest in the case of Deputy Leonardo Quintão (of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, PMDB). Quintão is the rapporteur for the mining code to be voted in the chamber, and mining companies funded 20% of his campaign. [4]

Large companies tend to finance party campaigns. For the 2010 presidential election, Vale donated 30 million reais to parties (some USD $15 million). The party that received the most donations was the ruling PT (Worker’ Party), with 10 millionreais. [5]

Oligarchy and the State

In February 2011 the twelve bishops and the archbishop of the Northeastern region of the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops issued a letter on the occasion of the yearly meeting held in southern Maranhão. “The history of Maranhão, Brazil, has been marked by small groups–through political influence and active corruption–appropriating for themselves that which belongs to all” [6].

Though the bishops do not mention the word “oligarchy,” their description refers to the Sarney family that has ruled the state for half a century.

“We can’t allow the state to continue placing itself at the exclusive service of the major mineral, soybean, juice, and meat exporters, building the necessary infrastructure for them to obtain higher and higher profits.”

José Sarney began his political career in the early 1960s. He was governor of Maranhão during the military dictatorship, from 1966 to 1971. Later he was a senator, also under the dictatorship, and president [of Brazil] from 1985 and 1990, following the death of President Tancredo Neves. He became a senator again, this time in the democracy, until he was elected president of the Chamber of Deputies in 2009. His daughter Roseana is following the same path; she was deputy, senator and twice governor of Maranhão, a position she currently holds. Corruption allegations prevented her from running for the presidency in 2002.

Face of so much wealth and power, the “Carajas 30 Years” Seminar submitted a list of thirteen demands. The demands are simple and easy to adopt. The fact that they have not been agreed to demonstrates the lack of political will on the part of the company and the state government.

The first demands include that Vale “build safe crossings along the railway,” conduct appropriate studies for the doubling of the railway, ” refrain from spying and infiltrating social movements with intelligence agents,” and take measures to reduce train noise, among other things. [7]

The links between Vale and the Sarney group have been well documented. Even the Supreme Electoral Tribunal investigated and questioned suspicious donations from mining and construction companies and banks. [8] The local oligarchy was reinforced by the arrival of the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva government in 2003, since the founder of the dynasty, José Sarney, was chosen as an ally. He supported Lula’s government in parliament.

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, currently the most recognized Brazilian anthropologist, attempts to explain these continuities against the backdrop of the June 2013 demonstrations that opened a new chapter for the country. He argues that Brazil is different from other countries in the region, characterized by scarce political participation and low popular mobilization. He believes his country is more racist than the United States: “Brazil continues to be a slave country, because its deep conscience is still based on slavery.” [9]

Viveiros de Castro says something else, something very uncomfortable. The PT chose the path of “improving the income of the poor without touching the income of the rich. So we have to get the money from somewhere else. Where? From the ground, literally.”

He concludes that the extractive model is the path of today’s progressivism.

“It’s destroying Brazil and devastating the Amazon, to avoid touching the purses of the rich”.

Raúl Zibechi is international relations editor at the magazine Brecha in Montevideo, adviser to grassroots organizations and writer of the monthly Zibechi Report of the CIP Americas Program www.cipamericas.org

Translation: Paige M Patchin

NOTES:

[1] Entrevista con Dário Bossi, IhuOnline, 24 de abril de 2014.
[2] O Estado de São Paulo, 26 de enero de 2012.
[3] Entrevista con Dário Bossi, IhuOnline, 24 de abril de 2014.
[4] Publicado el 12 de mayo de 2014, en http://global.org.br/programas/o-novo-codigo-da-mineracao-nao-pode-ter-a-relatoria-de-um-representante-das-mineradoras-do-pais/
[5] Clarissa Reis Oliveira, “Quem é quem nas discussões do novo código da mineração“, Rio de Janeiro, Ibase, 2013.
[6] En Justiça nos Trilhos, “Não Vale. Duplicação do lucro privado e dos impactos coletivos”, Anexo.
[7] Seminario Internacional 30 Años, 8 de mayo de 2014 en http://justicanostrilhos.org/Ato-em-defesa-das-comunidades
[8] Wagner Cabral da Costa, “Pelo sapato furado: bipolarização e reestruração oligárquica da política maranhense”, en A terceira margem do rio, São Luis, Edufma, 2009. Pp. 95-110.
[9] “A escravidão venceu no Brasil. Nunca foi abolida”. Entrevista com Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, en http://www.publico.pt/mundo/noticia/a-escravidao-venceu-no-brasil-nunca-foi-abolida-1628151

Transnational Corporations: Now is the time to call for a Binding Treaty

Source: Transnational Institute
18 June 2014
Brid Brennan and Gonzalo Berrón

Maxime Combes of Attac France interviews Gonzalo Berron and Brid Brennan on the eve of the debate at the 26th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on the need for a new legal framework to end corporate impunity.

You are saying that there is “a historic window of opportunity to initiate the negotiation for a binding Treaty on TNCs” under the UNHRC. Could you explain?

For decades, communities across the world who have suffered systemic and continuing corporate violations of human rights and of economic and ecological crimes and been denied justice have been calling for binding rules on the operationns of TNCs. The long silence on the need for binding obligations on Transnational Corporations was shattered in September 2013, when 85 states led by Ecuador placed a resolution on the agenda of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).This addressed a yawning gap in the current Human Rights mechanisms and institutions which lack a mandate to impose binding rules on the operations of TNCs and have therefore consistently failed to guarantee access to justice for affected communities.

This demand for binding rules has been consistently raised by civil society and the call is currently supported by more than 500 movements and networks. When this is combined with the resolution of 85 governments, we begin to call this moment a “historic window of opportunity”. The UNHRC is expected to address the issue during its current 26th Session before the end of June.

Decades of neoliberal international policies have strengthened the corporate powers on our economies, on nature and on our lives. Can you explain how this corporate power has grown exponentially and operates with impunity?

We have witnessed in the past decades a process of accelerated concentration of capital – through “fusions and acquisitions” of corporations – which has led to the consolidation of the neoliberal model, accelerated by the end to the cold war which had functioned as a barrier to the expansion of big capital.

This trend of capital expansion has been intensified and aggressively pursued through multiple Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) & Investment Agreements (BITs)–starting in 1989 with the Canada-US FTA. The terms of these agreements were set and continue to be set by transnational corporations demanding liberalisation of markets, access to minerals and raw materials and privatisation of public services as we see in the latest Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) proposed between the US and European Union or in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) involving the US and Latin American and Asian countries on the Pacific.

These Trade and Investment Agreements as well as the policies of the WTO and other International Financial Institutions (IMF & WB) have put in place legal frameworks which give unilateral protections to the operations of TNCs (including the right to sue governments for actual or perceived loss of profit or to demand changes in environmental legislation) yet impose no obligations on TNCs. In terms of impacts on affected communities these unilateral legal protections create what we call an “architecture of impunity”. In this context governments have become complicit and have failed to defend the public interest or the interests of their citizens. This has meant that TNCs have continued to commit systematic violations of human rights and labour rights as well as devastation of the environment.

In addition, new technologies and an increasing financialisation of capitalism, gave TNCs unprecedented opportunities for expansion all over the world, and into all dimensions of our lives. The multiple inter-related crises – economic and environmental - but especially the financial crisis of 2008 show the limits of this capitalist model, as well as how corporations profit from the turbulence. The process of concentration of capital has intensified through the crisis resulting in a deeply asymmetrical distribution of wealth – where the rich individuals and corporations have become far richer and the poor have become more impoverished in all regions of the world.

As they have become economically as well as politically stronger, big TNCs can operate with increasing impunity mainly in poor and developing countries in the global South’s, but also more recently in the global North. In their operations they continue to violate the whole spectrum of human rights. They do this in a direct way: labour rights are violated in enterprises every day but it is only the major incidents that make the headlines – as the case of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh (where 1,100 workers died) or Marikana in South Africa (where 31 miners were shot).

TNCs also violate the right to livelihood as in the cases of widespread land grabs or through sustained and systematic pollution by oil companies such as Shell and Total in Nigeria or Chevron in Ecuador. These human rights violations are not only systemic,, they are carried out with impunity. Thirty years after one of the world’s major industrial disasters - Union Carbide/Dow Chemical in Bophal, India - justice is still pending for the families of those who died and their second generation also suffering the effects of the environmental contamination.

Taking advantage of their “investors rights” gained in FTAs and IIAs and WTO agreements, TNCs have been able to shield themselves from responsibility as well as to dictate the price and the profits from their operations. Their profits have soared as they continue to benefit from intellectual property rights (TRIPs) that operate for example as barriers to access affordable medicines; from the increasing privatisation of public educational and health systems and from the commodification and marketisation of access to water and other public services.

This deep restructuring in our societies not only marks the establishment of a corporate economic model, it has also resulted in a re-configuration of political power and the role of the state. There is a growing popular understanding of the phenomenon of corporate capture of government policy decision making – whereby corporate lobby organisations are able to usurp the function of elected governments at the national and international institutions of democratic political power and bend these for corporate profit. 

In the case of impoverished or developing countries the asymmetry of power is huge and domestic law systems have been undermined and rendered incapable of defending their people from corporate violations and crime. In many cases laws have been adapted to favour TNCs operations or to protect their “investor’s rights” at the expense of basic human rights of people. Decisions by national tribunals and courts are side-lined and not implemented or rejected outright by TNCs as in the case of Chevron and Ecuador, where the California-based corporation has refused to submit to an Ecuadorian court ruling demanding $9.5 billion in damages.

However, while corporate power has grown exponentially and has been able to entrench its privileges in seemingly copper-fastened legal frameworks, this new conjuncture of a broad spectrum of governments of the South and the strong campaigns of affected communities and social movements confronting corporate power have built support for binding regulations on TNCs.

Moreover, citizens’ battles with corporations, over water for instance, have continued to spread from cities in the global South like Cochabamba and Manila to increasing and effective struggles against the privatisation of water in Europe. These include struggles in Thessaloniki; the Italian Water referendum and the European Citizens Initiative (ECI) where the European Public Services Union (EPSU) initiated campaign that collected 1,884,790 signatures saying ¨No to Privatisation of water” in Europe.

How can such a Treaty under the UNHRC limit the powers of TNCs they have under WTO, FTAs and investment regimes? How could it work? Would this treaty be more effective than Corporate Social Responsibility measures and the many charters that have been developed globally?

The process that could be opened this June in Geneva is a process to negotiate a Treaty for binding obligations on TNCs and include the establishment of an Institution/body mandated to enforce sanctions and give access to justice for affected communities.

What is being asked of the UNCHR at this stage is to establish an intergovernmental Working Group with an open ended mandate to initiate the process of establishing a Binding Treaty. This is still a very new and open process. That is why we say that this is just a first step in our struggle to rein in the political and economic power of TNCs. It is a struggle that will take some years especially if it aims to include the comprehensiveness of human rights – this will come under strong contestation - not least from the corporate lobby itself.

But such a Binding Treaty and an instrument to enforce it will definitely diminish the TNCs’ power to violate human rights with impunity. It will also be an instrument that provides access to justice for affected communities and people that are currently deprived of such access to a fair juridical process at the both the national and international levels. 

The international instruments we have until now (UN Guiding Principles, OECD Guide lines, ILO MNE Declaration, Global Compact, etc.) are all nonbinding and are in the realm of “soft law” and are therefore unable to provide justice. In fact these operate as window-dressing exercises since there is no independent verification of implementation. Besides continued documentation on the ground by affected communities demonstrates that TNC violations of human rights, labour rights and environmental standards are intensifying, which shows the ineffectiveness of such voluntary codes.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is mainly promoted as a publicity exercise for TNCs and is a method of projecting a more friendly image to the public and costs less than traditional expensive propaganda.

This is not the first time we try to get binding regulations on TNCs operations. Why should it work this time? What kind of citizen mobilization did you expect to reach this goal since such an international debate could be seen as very far from what is happening on the ground ?

Although there have been several previous attempts throughout the 1970s and 1990s within the UN to develop a “hard law” framework for TNCs, this is the first time 85 governments have converged on a demand to propose a process towards a Binding Treaty on TNCs. It is obvious that the voluntary UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights do not diminish corporate human rights violations. We can rightly ask what happened at Rana Plaza – a building which housed a concentration of top clothing brands, but where workers did not even have the right to refuse to work in a dangerous building. 

From our point of view and experience in working over several years documenting and mobilising solidarity with affected communities – the demand for international action is very strong on the ground. Besides, there is increasing experience and capacity to link across local struggles or develop common strategies in addressing a particular TNC. For example in the Permanent Peoples Tribunal Hearing being prepared for Geneva, communities from five countries will present joint testimony on the corporate giant Glencore and its operations in the Philippines, Peru, Columbia, Zambia, DRC. Some of these communities come from member states of the UNHRC. It definitely gives a new momentum to the debate when the affected communities speak for themselves both in the national and international arena and speak consistently for an end to corporate impunity.

Until now, the international community has failed to tackle corporate power despite a growing public consciousness of the unacceptable abuse of political and economic power exercised by these big economic actors. This can be seen in the daily destruction of livelihoods and the environment caused by the model of extractivism of fossil fuels and minerals and other natural resources. In addition, the outbreak of the 2008 financial and economic crises has highlighted the phenomenon of the yawning chasm between Big banks, Big Business, Corporations and Citizens – what the Occupy movement calls the 1% and the 99%.

Even with all the difficulties and challenges for movements mobilising in Europe and the US, we see this era as generating a significant political opportunity to strengthen social struggles and to develop new links globally that continue to resist corporate power.

Together with different international and national organizations, social movements, trade unions, grassroots groups and networks, you launched “a global campaign to dismantle corporate power and stop impunity”. In this campaign, you are promoting an International Peoples Treaty. What for? Would it be the foreshadowing of the Treaty under the UNHRC ?

Yes in June 2012 during the RIO+20 People’s Forum, the Global Campaign to Dismantle Corporate Power was launched. This initiative culminated a year of global consultation with affected communities, movements and networks campaigning and seeking justice for human rights violations and corporate crime.

Many organisations who became involved in this Campaign had worked in the framework of the Permanent People’s Tribunal from 2006-2010 and had extensively documented corporate economic and ecological crimes and widespread human rights violations across the broad fields of TNC operations – in Public Services, Water, Food, Land and Agriculture, Energy, Mining, Environment & the Commons and in the world of Work and Finance.

It became clear that these violations took place in a context of an architecture of impunity and legitimation provided by the international trade and investment regime which expanded ever more investors´ rights and denied citizens´ rights and moreover sanctioned governments who defended public policy and public interest. Furthermore, while affected communities had no redress or access to justice, corporations could sue governments for huge sums of money at such Tribunals as the International Center for the Settlement of International Disputes (ICSID) through the use of the investor-to-state dispute system (ISDS) or advance their interests through the WTOś Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM).

The development of the People’s Treaty is a key strategy of the Campaign – providing both the political process to strategise on how to dismantle corporate power and end impunity as well as the space to articulate and visibilise alternatives. Its juridical proposals in some instances intend to contribute to the Binding Treaty process currently before the UNHRC, while the work on alternatives aims to root a new vision of a a world beyond corporations in the transformative action arising in the midst of the confrontations with corporations. We believe people are the protagonists of fundamental changes that go beyond the juridical instrument of a Binding Treaty on Transnational Corporations. 

Therefore the Campaign’s International Call to Action urges the building of a powerful movement of solidarity and action against TNCs, the ending of TNCs’ impunity and the building of a world free from corporate power and corporate capture. 

The Peoples’ Treaty being developed by the Campaign is an important strategy and process for building broad consensus on the urgency and necessity of Binding Obligations on TNCs & for an international mechanism to enforce these.

In France, the common sense is to think that the French TNCs would not be the worst ones in the world and would rather be good examples. In response, some CSOs recently launched new campaigns against French TNCs like BNP-Paribas, Société Générale, Areva, Total, etc. What would you expect from these organisations and from French people in order to contribute to the establishment of binding and stronger regulations on TNCs?

Decades of neoliberalism and corporate propaganda have led to a popular understanding that ‘national’ TNCs are flagships of prosperity for the home states as well as for the states and peoples where the TNCs operate. The economic, social and environmental costs of extractivism has for instance been well hidden from the public in the home states of the TNCs.

However, the past five years of the economic, financial and systemic crisis is cumulatively demonstrating that this era of capitalism dominated by corporate rule is in deep crisis. There is a shift in the conjuncture, with growing popular support for a just transition and system change which sees a dynamic and participative role of social movements and civil society organisations advancing alternatives to the hegemony of corporations in both theory and in practice from the ground up.

These new campaigns launched in France are also a strong indication that people are looking critically behind the glossy image of national corporate flagships and seeing that the corporate model of development is unsustainable.

Our expectation is that these campaigns will expose the human rights violations and environmental destruction of the TNC model. Furthermore the campaigns can challenge the French government both in its role and responsibility as a member of the European Union and of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC).It will be important to urge the French government to vote in the June session of the UNHRC in favour of an inter-governmental process to initiate the steps to develop a Binding Treaty on TNCs.

We also expect that French organisations will participate during the Week of Mobilisation in Geneva (June 23-27) and give a strong message to the French government and its Permanent Mission in Geneva. In terms of the ongoing campaign beyond Geneva, we look forward to joining with French movements and organisations in challenging the corporate capture of the Climate Negotiations at COP 21 scheduled to take place in France in June 2015. Indeed the COP 21 People´s Forum will provide an inspiring context in which to undertake a major public consultation on the International Peoples’ Treaty.