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Pushing the humanitarian agenda through engagement with business actors: the ICRC's experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2013

Claude Voillat
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Abstract

Large companies can have both massively positive and massively negative impacts on communities, be it directly through their operations or indirectly through their influence on decision-makers. This is particularly true when business operations take place in conflict-affected or high-risk areas. Humanitarian organisations endeavouring to bring protection and/or assistance in these areas cannot, therefore, ignore these influential actors. Engagement with business actors – as well as with any other societal actor – should be framed within a clear rationale in order to deliver positive results. This article introduces the rationale that has been developed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and offers some examples of past engagement between the ICRC and business actors. It notes that occasions for humanitarian organisations to engage with business actors are likely to become more frequent in the coming years and argues that this trend, if properly managed, offers humanitarian organisations opportunities to leverage energies, know-how, and resources from the business sector for the benefit of the persons and communities that humanitarian organisations strive to protect and assist.

Keywords

businesscorporate social responsibilitycommunity engagementpartnershipmulti-stakeholder initiativesprivate military and security companiesextractive industry
Type
The Practice
Information
International Review of the Red Cross , Volume 94 , Issue 887: Business, violence and conflict , September 2012 , pp. 1089 - 1114
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 2013 

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References

1 Several organisations and academic institutions have tried to compare the relative economic sizes of countries and corporations, using various calculation methods. Working on different sources, Global Trends published a recent article establishing a new ranking. According to this ranking, in 2009 44 per cent of the largest 100 economies and 59 per cent of the largest 150 economies were corporations. This article is available at: www.globaltrends.com/knowledge-center/features/shapers-and-influencers/66-corporate-clout-the-influence-of-the-worlds-largest-100-economic-entities (all internet references were accessed in 2013).

2 The website of the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre offers a wealth of examples: www.business-humanrights.org.

3 See the articles by Joanna Kyriakakis and Simon O'Connor, in this issue, for an overview of the various ways in which international and domestic criminal law can address business involvement in violations of international humanitarian law.

4 The website of the Voluntary Principles initiative contains the full text of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, information on the various participants in or observers of the initiative, and miscellaneous information on the work performed and reporting produced under the initiative: www.voluntaryprinciples.org.

5 The Implementation Guidance Tools are publicly available at: www.voluntaryprinciples.org/files/VPs_IGT_Final_13-09-11.pdf.

6 These states were Afghanistan, Angola, Australia, Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Iraq, Poland, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and the United States.

7 The Montreux Document on pertinent international legal obligations and good practices for States related to operations of private military and security companies during armed conflict, available at: www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/montreux-document-170908.htm.

8 The Montreux Document can be viewed in the various official UN languages at: www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/63/467.

9 An updated list of states supporting the Montreux Document is available at: www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home/topics/intla/humlaw/pse/parsta.html.

10 The text of the Code of Conduct as well as other related information is available at: www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home/topics/intla/humlaw/pse/coc.html.

11 The mandate of this Working Group and other related information is available at: www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/WGMilitary/Pages/OEIWGMilitaryIndex.aspx.

12 ICRC, Business and International Humanitarian Law: an Introduction to the Rights and Obligations of Business Enterprises under International Humanitarian Law, 30 November 2006, available at: www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/business-ihl-150806.htm.

13 With time the booklet has been translated into French, Russian, and Chinese.

14 Background information on the ICRC's engagement with weapon-bearers is available at: www.icrc.org/eng/what-we-do/building-respect-ihl/dialogue-weapon-bearers/index.jsp.

15 The following link to the ICRC's Annual Reports gives access to a country-by-country description of ICRC activities, including ICRC engagement with weapon-bearers: www.icrc.org/eng/resources/annual-report/index.jsp.

16 Further information on this program can be found in the ICRC's Annual Report 2004, p. 112, available at: www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/annual-report/icrc-annual-report-2004.htm.

17 Statutes of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Art. 5(3), adopted by the 25th International Conference of the Red Cross at Geneva in 1986, available at: www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/other/statutes-en-a5.pdf.

18 See Peter Shadbolt, ‘Kidnapped Chinese workers released in Sudan’, in CNN, 7 February 2012, available at: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/07/world/africa/sudan-hostages.

19 See ‘Rebels release Chinese hostages’, in ChinaDaily, 30 April 2007, available at: www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-04/30/content_863863.htm.

20 See ‘Niger rebels release French hostages’, in France 24, 25 June 2008, available at: www.france24.com/en/20080625-niger-rebels-release-french-hostages-niger-rebels.

21 The initial seven corporate supporters to join the ICRC Corporate Support Group were ABB, Fondation Hans Wilsdorf, Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch, Roche, Swiss Re, Vontobel, and Zurich. Corporate supporters that joined the group after its 2005 launch include Holcim, Fondation Avina, Credit Suisse and Novartis. An updated list of the ICRC Corporate Support Group members is available at: www.icrc.org/eng/what-we-do/other-activities/private-sector/private-sector-csg-members.htm.

22 These criteria are listed in the document ‘Ethical principles guiding ICRC's partnerships with the private sector’, available at: www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/ethical-principles-220502.htm.

23 Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the Issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises, ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy: a Framework for Business and Human Rights’, UN Doc. A/HRC/8/5, 7 April 2008, available at: www.reports-and-materials.org/Ruggie-report-7-Apr-2008.pdf.

24 By way of illustration, the following document, produced in late 2012 by the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable, provides US-focused examples of domestic legislation and regulations as well as of multi-stakeholder processes in its sections titled ‘Discussion 2’ and ‘Discussion 3’ respectively. See ‘Second Annual Meeting of the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable: continuing our coordinated movement, Washington D.C., September 6–7, 2012’, available at: http://accountabilityroundtable.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ICAR-Second-Annual-Meeting-Report1.pdf.

25 The ‘Overview of selected initiatives and instruments relevant to corporate social responsibility’, in Annual Report on the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises 2008, OECD, 2009, provides an interesting oversight and classification of multi-stakeholder initiatives: see www.oecd.org/daf/inv/mne/40889288.pdf. The document Investing the Rights Way: a Guide for Investors on Business and Human Rights, Institute for Human Rights and Business, 2013, provides another interesting oversight and rough analysis of international frameworks and codes/principles/standards: see www.ihrb.org/publications/reports/investing-the-rights-way.html.

26 The operational and opportunity costs of conflict with communities have been shown in Rachel Davis and Daniel M. Franks, ‘The costs of conflict with local communities in the extractive industry’, conference paper, Proceedings of the First International Seminar on Social Responsibility in Mining, Santiago, Chile, 19–21 October 2011, SRMinning Publisher, available at: http://shiftproject.org/sites/default/files/Davis%20&%20Franks_Costs%20of%20Conflict_SRM.pdf. It is worth mentioning here two extremely valuable publications that provide guidance to companies in their endeavours to operate in a way that ‘does no harm’. The first publication is generic: Luc Zandvliet and Mary B. Anderson, Getting it Right: Making Corporate-Community Relations Work, Greenleaf Publishing, April 2009 (at the time of publishing, the authors were part of the Corporate Engagement Program of CDA Collaborative Learning Projects). The second publication is specific to situations of conflict and to the extractive industry: Conflict-Sensitive Business Practice: Guidance for Extractive Industries, International Alert, March 2005.

27 By way of example, one could note how the Unilever Foundation connects its social investments and NGO partnerships with its corporate responsibility plan entitled ‘Sustainable Living’: see www.unilever.com/aboutus/foundation/. In the same industry sector, one could also note the same type of connection between Nestlé's social investments and NGO partnerships and its corporate responsibility plan entitled ‘Creating Shared Value’: see www.nestle.com/csv.

28 The IMD is one of the world's most renowned business schools for executive education. The IMD's Corporate Learning Network is a platform that allows its members to learn and exchange information on strategy and management issues through roundtables and learning events. Furthermore, it offers its members access to a wealth of IMD-produced resources, from academic articles to book summaries and podcasts.