DEVELOPMENT: NGOs Attack UN Participation in Business Forum

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 27 1999 (IPS) - Human rights and environmental activists have been worried about growing cooperation between businesses and the UN system – and a Geneva-based forum linking UN agencies and corporation accused of abuses has added to their concerns.

According to several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which wrote a letter to the heads of two UN agencies last week urging them not to participate in the Business Humanitarian Forum (BHF), the new partnership with the private sector is bringing together some strange bedfellows.

On the one hand, the Forum is co-chaired by Sadako Ogata, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and includes Carol Bellamy, the executive director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), as a board member.

Yet the group’s other co-chair is John Imle, president of Union Oil of California (UNOCAL), a company made notorious for its Yadana gas pipeline project, forged in collaboration with Burma’s military junta, and for its now-suspended efforts to conclude gas deals with Afghanistan’s Taliban regime.

“UNOCAL has done so much harm to my country,” said Ka Hsaw Wa, the Burmese-born director of EarthRights International. “It is discouraging to find respected UN agencies sharing the podium with companies like UNOCAL, especially to those of us who are fighting every day against their human rights abuses.”

Human rights groups contend that the construction of the Yadana pipeline has displaced thousands of Burmese villagers and exploited others for forced labour, and that the profits of the project are expected to bolster the junta.

UNOCAL has repeatedly denied the charges and asserted that the project is being carried out with respect for human rights norms.

All the same, the list of participants in the BHF has sparked worries that some unsavoury corporations may use their association with UN agencies to refurbish their public image.

Also listed as a Forum member is Nestle, which has been the focus of controversy for its distribution of infant formula which may be dangerous for children.

Several NGOs, including the Transnational Resource and Action Centre, a San Francisco-based rights group, sent a letter to Bellamy and Ogata this week urging them to resign from the Forum.

TRAC also led an effort last March to discourage plans, now on hold, by the UN Development Programme to collaborate with private companies like Dow Chemical and Rio Tinto.

“So far, the way UN agencies have implemented (UN Secretary- General) Kofi Annan’s call for a closer relationship with the private sector is to jump in bed with a bunch of bad corporate actors,” argued TRAC Director Joshua Karliner.

Andres Ramirez, senior liaison officer for UNHCR’s New York office, said Friday that the agency had not yet responded to the NGO letter, but would do so shortly once it formally received the letter.

“This is a tripartite meeting where NGOs, the private sector and UN agencies discuss and try to understand each other better,” Ramirez said of the Forum. He said that several rights groups and relief organisations, including InterAction and Care, had confirmed their intentions to participate in the BHF as well.

UN agencies in general have tried to reach out to the business world in recent years, with Annan particularly outspoken about the need for increased partnership with the private sector.

Last year, US businessman Ted Turner set up a foundation to distribute one billion dollars of grants to the UN system over the next decade, in projects including population and health issues.

Yet such contributions, and the collaboration considered by UNDP earlier this year, have drawn a backlash from critics who argue that corporations with spotty records may simply want to “whitewash” their reputations through association with the United Nations.