UNITED
NATIONS-- UN Secretary General Kofi A.
Annan showed the world
that "big business" is not only
concerned with profit making. Last year,
Global Compact, an initiative which encourages
companies to work with the UN, its agencies
and other organizations in an attempt to
embrace international principals based
on human rights, labor standards and environment,
was launched. A year later, on Tuesday,
January 8, 2002, Annan convened the first
meeting of an Advisory Council for the
Global Compact.
The Advisory Council is a 17-member
body which includes both private and public sector
leaders, whose aim is to assist the Secretary General
on ways of combating the problems that face today's
economy.
Global Compact is a voluntary initiative that
has attracted the support of companies from around
the world. The Compact asks the companies to
rely on international principals which call for
the protection and observance of human rights.
The principals are based on labor standards that
ask companies to eliminate all forms of forced
and compulsory labor, abolish child labor and
ban discrimination in respect to employment and
occupation. Finally the principals based on environment
call for business to support precautionary measures
for protecting the environment and encourage
the development of environmentally friendly technologies.
The Global Compact
encourages exchange of information between
companies. Robert Hormats, Vice Chairman
of Goldman Sachs and a member of the Advisory
Council said that Global Compact is an opportunity
for companies who are confronted by challenges
in today's economy to teach each other based
on their own experiences of dealing with similar
challenges. Hormats said it was in "early
stages of the process."
While speaking
at a press conference held at UN headquarters
in New York, Barbara Krumsiek,
the President and CEO of Calvert Group and member
of the Advisory Council, said of the Global Compact, "This
is a voluntary program that begins with intentions
and has a high degree of expectation."
While addressing
the scrutiny that large cooperations are under
due to globalization from certain groups,
Bill Jordan, the General Secretary of the International
Confederations of Free Trade Unions and a member
of the Advisory Council said, "Big business
wants the global market to succeed." He
agreed with Annan when he said that "big
business" did not just want to take over
the world economy. He reiterated that large cooperations
had the whole good of the world economy in mind. "Big
companies that have been enjoying the benefits
of globalization should be prepared to stand
up and say, 'We don't want to cause harm'," he
said and according to him was the aim of joining
Global Compact.
The member of the Council said that they would
advise Annan on ways to help members of the Global
Compact to face challenges of globalization.
The members of the Council present at the press
conference said that it was only their job to
advise. They do not govern the Compact.
In order to see if the member companies stick
to the international principals, the Council
advised the Secretary General that organizations
involved do self-evaluations based on the principals
set forth by the Compact.
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