Blog of Q's

This is old news, but some readers
missed it. If the plaintiffs had won, it would have been an astounding
precedent for the use of U.S. courts to ajudicate actions that take
place in a foreign jurisdiction.  The controversial attempt to use
this ancient law for this new purpose is a major story  in the
area of
corporate social responsibility. What’s more, it involves 200 year-old
pirates. The law will certainly be back in the news in
2005. For a discussion of the Alien Tort Claims Act, see the January Newsletter at www.csrpolicies.org.
                              

Dec. 13, 2004 (MSNBC) LOS ANGELES – Oil giant Unocal Corp. has reached
an agreement in principle to settle human rights lawsuits involving
allegations of enslaved labor during a 1990s pipeline project in
Southeast Asia, a company spokesman said. The lawsuits maintained that
El Segundo-based Unocal should be held liable for the alleged
enslavement of villagers by soldiers during construction of a natural
gas pipeline in the 1990s in Myanmar…

The federal case, which relies on the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act that
was originally enacted to prosecute pirates, was reinstated in 2002 by
the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court in June ruled
that certain types of cases involving violations of international law
could be pursued in federal courts under the obscure act.

Press Release from Lifeworth.com, 31st January 2005

Review of 2004 examines corporate contributions to poverty reduction,
and maps out future agenda for corporate social responsibility.

…  The shape of this new [poverty] agenda and the potential and
drawbacks for both business and society is analyzed in the 4th ‘Annual
Review of Corporate Responsibility’, published today, by the
progressive careers service Lifeworth.com. …

… Leading business strategists such as CK Prahalad report that some
companies have seized opportunities by designing products and services
that can be consumed by the world’s poor. …

The Review argues that business engagement with poverty and development
is essential but is currently poorly informed and over-hyped. Much of
the profitable business with lower-income markets involves products
such as mobile phones, not the provision of basic nutrition,
sanitation, education and shelter, so the current expansion of
profitable business in the global South does not necessarily imply
poverty reduction. The type of ‘development’ that is promoted by
marketing consumer products to the poor is also questioned. The
environmental impacts of changing consumption patterns need to be
looked at, as well as the potential displacement of local companies and
increasing resource drain from local economies, as larger foreign
corporations become more active.

The Review argues that future work on how corporations can aid poverty
reduction and development must address exploitative supply chains, tax
avoidance, and anti-competitive practices, as these currently undermine
corporations’ economic contribution to development. …

A good contribution to the debate about “business at the bottom of the pyramid.”