United Nations human rights guidelines for businesses

Ethical Performance email | November 4, 2002 | Staff

[LurkedLongEnough]

United Nations human rights guidelines for businesses should be ready for publication by next summer, according to the November issue of Ethical Performance.

EP says work on drafting the guidelines has been making 'significant progress', and that the five-strong UN Commission on Human Rights working group responsible for drawing them up is confident the final document will be ready by August 2003.

The latest draft of the guidelines, Responsibilities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights, includes a new section suggesting that companies should pay 'reparations' to anyone 'adversely affected' by their failure to comply with the guidelines.

Also in the new issue of Ethical Performance, the monthly independent business newsletter for corporate social responsibility practitioners:

€ UK charities could be forced to disclose their stance on socially responsible investment
€ Canada considers plans to brand the country a leader in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR)
€ ISO standard on CSR moves a step closer € Anglo American to speak up on human rights
€ The European Commission unveils CSR forum

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Coming soon to a company near you.

[Eastbound]

Reparations? Retro-active to the year 1492, of course. Today, suggestions and guidelines. Tomorrow, it's the law -- hidden at the bottom of a 5-foot-high thick stack of inconsequential treaties authorized by a handful of congress critters at 3 o'clock in the morning by an unrecorded hand-vote and discovered by a legal assistant five years later while preparing a defense for the first complaint invoking the treaty provisions for a $15 Million award filed by a dis-gruntled dock worker who over-stressed his back muscles while unloading a stalk of bananas which was one banana over the maxiumum allowed under the treaty while unloading a boat from a member-nation.

[ikka]

How come the UN never talks about reparations in the case of Muslim jihad?