Introduction

The current age of globalization has seen an increase in the power and influence of corporations on economic life around the world, and this influence has implications for human rights, environmental protection, labor conditions and public health.

Corporate policies and practices have a major role to play in virtually every major environmental problem worldwide.[1] Although business has long been scrutinized for its contribution to environmental degradation, that scrutiny has increased in the last ten years.

Corporate responsibility for human rights violations is a newer subject of study, as it has been assumed that protection and violation of human rights was exclusively a concern of governments. Recently, however, human rights advocates and corporations have joined a discussion of the corporate role in human rights issues. Rarely, however, have the environmental practices of the companies been linked to analysis of their impact in the human rights realm.

This paper introduces cases in which corporate behavior has led to violations of human rights, with a focus on cases where the environmental impacts of a company's practices have led to abrogation of human rights, including economic and social rights such as right to subsistence and right to health.

This paper barely scratches the surface of the topic of corporate environmental practices and human rights, yet a study of the cases in this paper shows that voluntary corporate commitments to human rights are inadequate mechanisms for protecting human rights, and that a binding legal framework is called for.

1. Political Rights of Environmental Defenders - How Corporate Security Arrangements Imperil Environmentalists? Safety and Freedom

The simplest connection between corporate environmental behavior and human rights involves

the civil and political freedoms of environmental activists. There have been several famous cases in which even the right to life has been denied to environmental activists. The most famous of these are the assassination of Brazilian rubber tapper leader Chico Mendes and the execution of  Nigerian anti-Shell activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.

The role of Shell in Saro-Wiwa's persecution has been hotly debated, and the company denies any responsibility for his death. However, a close look at the case reveals that Shell had enough influence with the Nigerian government to possibly help avoid his execution.[2]

The more systematic aspect of Shell's role in civil and political rights problems in Nigeria stems from the security arrangements between the government and the oil companies. The arrangements allowed Shell and Chevron to call in military units to protect their pipelines, separation stations and other facilities. Shell was able to call in Nigeria's mobile police to violently suppress demonstrations. According to Nigerian sources, Chevron paid security forces to provide security, and even provided helicopters for a military action in which two protestors were killed.[3] While Shell and Chevron most likely did not request the military to use violence, the risk of violence and the danger to the protestors must have been well known to the companies, with their many years of operations in the country.

Security arrangements are also central to environmental and human rights problems in Burma. There, oil companies Unocal, Total and Premier have arrangements with the notorious Burmese military to provide security for the Yadana and Yetagun gas pipelines. The Burmese military's methods for building the pipeline and providing security have involved gross violations of many human rights, and include use of forced labor, forced relocation, rape, and summary execution. In addition, the military's practice of stealing villagers' food, combined with forced labor and forced relocation, have made it impossible for many villagers to feed themselves, and have forced some of them to abandon their homes and flee the region.[4]

While there is no question that the Burmese military is the direct perpetrator of these violations, the companies' role is also quite significant. They knew of the military's penchant for human rights violations before entering partnerships with it, they knew of the existence of some of the violations, they benefited financially from the relationship with the military. Furthermore, they remain business partners with the military, which continues its pattern of violations, and continues to provide security for the pipelines.[5]

The companies continue to maintain either that human rights violations have not occurred, or that they occurred in the past and have stopped, or that they occurred but the companies had no knowledge or responsibility for the violations.[6]

Colombia, Indonesia and India are other countries where security arrangements have put police or army forces known for human rights violations in charge of security for company operations. In developing countries in general, lack of government resources may cause companies to pay for private security from a public police force; yet the company may be unable to ensure respect for human rights from their security force, and may even benefit from violations.[7]

These security arrangements have the effect of providing support for the police or military, and have resulted in violations of civil and political rights of local people. In the case of Burma, repression is so severe that environmental activists critical of the government or its business partners have not appeared. In other places, the repression of rights has been aimed directly at activists concerned with environmental and health impacts of the operation in question, and thus have an especially chilling effect on environmental protection efforts in the country.

2. Right to Health and a Healthy Environment

The case of Texaco in Ecuador is a classic for studying the impact of corporate behavior on the right to health and a healthy environment. A major part of the tragedy of the Ecuadorian Amazon stems from a decision by Texaco to dump oil and drilling wastes, rather than re-inject them into wells as is typically done in the U.S. On the face of it, this was an environmental decision, that is, a decision to save money by avoiding investment in technology to protect the environment from wastes.[8]

However, in addition to causing environmental contamination of streams and forest areas, the practices of Texaco in Ecuador also led to contamination of farmland and drinking water, which has implications for human health. Health studies of both indigenous and campesino populations in oil areas of the Oriente have found high rates of various health problems, including malnutrition and birth defects. Many families have been unable to support themselves through fishing and farming, as they did before being affected by Texaco' operations.[9]

Similar stories are found with oil operations in dozens of countries around the world.[10]

In addition to the oil industry, the right to health is threatened by corporate activities in the chemical industry. Evidence has emerged that certain chemicals, known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs), have contaminated human flesh and breast milk, causing not only cancer but also affecting the ability to reproduce healthy children. Especially affected are indigenous people with fish diets,  women and infants who breast feed.

With POPS, we confront a situation in which many companies are implicated, and the effects of POPs can rarely if ever be traced to a single company. In addition, some of the products and processes implicated in the release of POPs to the environment are so widespread that their elimination will be difficult in the short run. Nevertheless, negotiations on an agreement to eliminate POPs are underway under the auspices of the United Nations as an environmental agreement. The human rights implications of POPs-related industrial activity should also be taken into account to make the agreement stronger.

Other chemicals affect the right to health at a more local level. Farm workers, for example, are routinely made ill and even killed by use of pesticides manufactured by major chemical companies and used by agribusiness.

3. Indigenous Peoples' Rights

Because of the close relationship of many indigenous groups to the natural environment, environmental contamination and species loss also represents a threat to human rights, especially economic and cultural rights.

Looking at the example of POPs again, we see some indigenous communities in northern latitudes facing a terrible choice between which rights they can exercise. If they continue to eat contaminated  fish and marine mammals which are the traditional basis of their diet, it  will lead to health problems and possibly reproductive problems for individuals and possibly the community as a whole. The alternative is to avoid those foods; but this means abandoning traditional ways of life based on fishing and hunting, with serious implications for the culture itself.[11]

Indigenous people have often served as stewards of the natural environment, and therefore their cultural survival and the integrity of their land rights are often integral to environmental protection. Extractive industries in particular have caused violations of indigenous land rights.

For example, diamond companies De Beers and Anglo-American have removed indigenous people from the Central Kalahari Reserve in South Africa, citing their own rights as investors.[12]

In the Philippines, Western Mining Corporation is attempting to evict the B'laan people, and the conflict there has resulted in the deaths of 17 people and displacement of 120 families.[13] The fact that the Australian company has received support from the Philippine government does not excuse their behavior, but rather shows why corporations cannot merely hide behind national government support for their activities but must be accountable to international human rights norms.

4. Freedom from Discrimination

The discussion of indigenous peoples' rights above leads to another consideration, that of discrimination against ethnic minorities in environmental matters. In the U.S. the pattern of discrimination against minorities, called environmental racism by U.S. activists, has been recognized by the federal government.

Typically, ethnic minorities with little economic and political power are at the receiving end of a disproportionate burden of environmental hazards from wastes, manufacturing and transportation. This dynamic functions within countries, as with the siting of hazardous waste landfills and incinerators in African-American communities in the southern region of the U.S., and transnationally, as with the trend to export wastes from industrialized to developing countries in the 1980's. In fact, the ideology of free trade and liberalized investment tends to facilitate discriminatory commerce by private companies by removing barriers to finding the cheapest place to do business, even if that means less protective human rights and environmental standards.

In the Texaco case described above, the U.S. based company discriminated against Ecuadorian Indians and campesinos by using a non-reinjection technology that would not have been allowed in the U.S. In the case of Shell and the Ogoni, the company was involved in a pattern of repression against the Ogoni minority in Nigeria. Dozens of cases involving exports of toxic waste, for example from the U.S. to Haiti, South Africa and Bangladesh, have involved sending the problem to a country with less power and resources to protect itself against illegal and harmful trade.[14]

This pattern of environmental discrimination leads directly to health problems for workers and communities which become the hosts to many of the world's most hazardous processes.

5. Food Security and Subsistence

The rights to subsistence and food security are distinct aspects of the right to health. Some of the cases already cited above also provide examples of violations of these rights. For example, oil spills from Shell's operations in Ogoniland have led to severe difficulties in feeding families in the region.[15]

In Guyana, exploitation of forests by logging companies (with the encouragement of the government) has jeopardized the subsistence of the indigenous forest inhabitants.[16]

In Papua New Guinea, some 30,000 village landowners living in the vicinity of the Ok Tedi River have lost income from selling fish and agricultural products, due to waste dumped from the gold and copper mine operated by Broken Hill Properties.[17]

The operations of mining company Freeport-McMoran in West Papua (Irian Jaya), Indonesia are another example of corporate environmental practices that affect economic and social rights. Large quantities of toxic wastes from the world's largest gold mine, operated by Freeport, have led to copper and mercury contamination of local water supplies. Local people assert that the contamination has made their water undrinkable and that wastes have also interfered with cultivation of food staples and the ability to feed themselves.[18]

Conclusion

Corporations often assert that their presence in a country will lead, ipso facto, to improvements in democracy and increase in freedoms. There is also often an assumption that western companies hold the cleanest technologies which will be most beneficial to the environment. While these assertions may be true on occasion, the opposite may also be true. Human rights are absolute values, and violations may not be justified on the assertion that overall, long-term impact of a business investment is positive. Assessing the overall impact of a corporation's activities in a given country or locale is a subjective exercise: business projects may provide needed employment to some but force others off their land; it may provide material wealth but destroy the natural environment. A company may assert that its impact for the local community and economy is positive, local residents may assert that the impact is negative, but no one entity can make that determination.

It is sometimes said that the time for confrontation with business is over, and that dialogue and cooperation are the best way forward. Dialogue may well be helpful in some cases; however without legal restraints it will always be on the terms of the more powerful entity in the dialogue.

In stressing the need for a legal framework to regulate corporate behavior in the human rights and environmental realms, we are not driven by an anti-business ideology, but by the recognition that to advance the cause of human rights, business must be subject to the same rules as governments and individuals, and mechanisms must be put in place to hold them accountable to those rules.

*For information: TRAC/ Corporate Watch P.O. Box 29344, San Francisco, CA 94129, USA. E-mail. kbruno@igc.org

[1] Greer and Bruno, "Greenwash: The Reality Behind Corporate Environmentalism", Third World Network, Penang 1996.

[2] Human Rights Watch, "The Price of Oil: Corporate Responsibility and Human Rights Violations in Nigeria's Oil Producing Communities," 1999; Steve Kretzmann and Shannon Wright, "Human Rights and Environment Operations: Information on the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies 1996-1997", Project Underground and Rainforest Action Network, 1997.

[3] Bowoto, et al. v. Chevron Corporation, Case no. C99-2506 (N.D. Cal.1999).

[4] Tyler Giannini et al. "Total Denial Continues" EarthRights International, Bangkok and Washington D.C. May 2000.

[5] ibid.

[6] ibid.

[7] Bennett Freeman "Private Security and Human Rights in the Extractive Sector: A UK/US Discussion Paper", unpublished.

[8] Judith Kimerlin "Amazon Crude Natural Resources Defense Council", New York 1991.

[9] "Rights Violations in the Ecuadorian Amazon: The Human Rights Consequences of Oil Development", Center for Economic and Social Fights, March 1995.

[10] "Voices of Resistance", Oilwatch, Quito 1996.

[11] "Drumbeat for Mother Earth", video and action kit, Indigenous Environmental Network, 1999.

[12] Maurice Malanes and Aileen Abner, "The New World Order Threatens The Rights of Indigenous Peoples", Indigenous Perspectives, v.1 no.1 January 2000 p.145.

[13] Wilfredo V. Alangui, "TNC Investment on Indigenous People's Territories", Indigenous Perspectives v.2 no.2 December 1999 p.84.

[14] Jim Vallette et al., "International Waste Trade Inventory", Greenpeace International, Amsterdam 1994.

[15] Greer and Giannini, "Earth Rights: Linking the Quests for Human Rights and Environmental Protection", EarthRights International, Bangkok and Washington D.C. 1999  p.66.

[16] ibid, p.67.

[17] ibid, p.69.

[18] "Earth Rights - Linking Human Rights and Environmental Protection", EarthRights International, Bangkok and Washington D.C. 1999.