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Zimbabwe Connections of UN Global
Compact Leader Questioned Alongside Delistings
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED
NATIONS, July 6 -- While
236 companies have been delisted this year from the UN Global Compact
for
labor, human and other rights, the company run by the chairman of the
Foundation
for the Global Compact, Anglo-American mining run by Sir Mark
Moody-Stuart, has
been exposed as doing business in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, mostly
recently a
$400 million investment in a platinum mine. As a Danish pension fund
mulls
divesting its holdings in Anglo-American based
on the standardless investment in
Zimbabwe, Moody-Stuart's and the Compact's actions on this issue will
be a
substantive test for the endeavor.
Among the
companies
delisted this year are financial institutions including Barclays
Bank
of Ghana and Santander Investment Peru, accountants Ernst & Young
Brasil,
makeup giant L'Oreal, extractive companies Petronas Philippines and
Phelps Dodge Philippines,
extractive users Ford Malaysia, Fiat, Mitsubishi Motors and... Standard
Commercial Tobacco Malawi, which
as a company whose main product clearly kills people perhaps should not
have
been a member to begin with. The Compact, many of its critics have
said, should
modernize its stance on tobacco, for example.
It is to the Compact's credit that
companies which refuse to even file the most minimal reports get
delisted. But
there is still not enough focus on what the companies actually do, such
as
standardless business in Zimbabwe. Inner City Press asked Mark Moody
Stuart,
who also to his credit is one of the few communicative members of the
Compact's
board, about doing business under dictatorships and governments which
swallow
all income before their people. In November 2007,
Inner City Press asked
Moody-Stuart if companies can be thrown out or suspended if they
enable regimes
which torture and violate rights.
UNGC's Moody-Stuart and Ban Ki-moon,
investment in Zimbabwe not shown
Moody-Stuart
said that the focus is to bring
companies up by inviting them to join. He added that there is a
procedure to
consider systemic abuses. "Has it ever been used?" asked Inner City
Press. Moody-Stuart acknowledged that it hadn't.
In May of this
year, Inner City Press asked him
if the Compact's board has discussed
corporate roles in the food price crisis, including as speculating and
profiting on the price rises. "It's an issue of serious concern to
companies," Moody-Stuart said, but added that "the Compact cannot
offer advice or guidance." Another
reporter wondered, what's it good for then?
Moments later, Moody-Stuart
reversed course and had the Compact "encouraging" companies "to
sign up for the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative."
Moody-Stuart said of "countries with weak governance" that if you
pour aid in, "it leaks away." In Zimbabwe, it spurts. Yet Mark
Moody-Stuart's Anglo-American continues business there.
Looking foward, the Compact's "inactive" list, a
step toward
delisting, includes subsidiaries of Avon, Cargill, Deloitte &
Touche,
GlaxoSmithKline and yes, some financial institutions...
Footnote:
also on
non-communication leading to exit, Inner City Press is told by a
variety of a
sources that Assistant Secretary General Yohannes Mengesha of the UN
Department
of General Assembly and Conference Management is resigning. Why this
news
circulates, and if true is not or late-announced by the administration,
is
still not known. We will follow the issue.
* * *
These reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
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Other,
earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available
in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
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2006-08 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
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