AFRO-NETS> UN Millennium Summit: NGO's assail UN ties to corporate-led trend

[Claudio Schuftan <aviva@netnam.vn>]

UN Millennium Summit: NGO's assail UN ties to corporate-led trend
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http://www.unfoundation.org/unwire/unwire.cfm

On the eve of the UN Millennium Summit in New York, members of sev-
eral leading nongovernmental organizations convened a forum yesterday 
to denounce the trend of corporate-led economic globalization, in 
particular addressing growing concern that the United Nations is 
placing too much priority on its partnerships with powerful corpora-
tions worldwide.

Representatives from NGOs such as Public Citizen's Global Trade 
Watch, the Rainforest Action Network and the Transnational Resource 
and Action Center/Corporate Watch held a series of panel discussions 
at Town Hall in Manhattan to articulate the dangers of the unchecked 
power of global corporations and to discuss measures to refocus the 
UN charter on human rights and the environment. The meeting, entitled 
"Globalization and the United Nations: Can the United Nations be Sal-
vaged," was sponsored by the International Forum on Globalization, an 
international alliance of 60 activists, scholars, economists, re-
searchers and writers.

Kenny Bruno of the Transnational Resource and Action Center/Corpwatch 
said during his speech before the packed hall that the UN has in re-
cent years been forming partnerships with massive transnational cor-
porations that are "infamous for environmental degradation and viola-
tions of human rights," such as Nike and Royal Dutch Shell. Most of 
the organizations at the meeting strongly criticized the UN Global 
Compact, a cooperative framework initiated by UN Secretary-General 
Kofi Annan, which leaders of nearly 50 global corporations signed on 
to in July.

Bruno charged that the UN is vulnerable to forming these kinds of 
partnerships under pressure from the United States to be more busi-
ness-friendly, adding that pursuing them is "terrible judgement."

Bruno further criticized the Global Compact by saying that the corpo-
rations face little or no monitoring and a lack of enforcement, since 
the companies involved agreed to sign onto the compact voluntarily.

Many of Bruno's arguments are included in his organization's report, 
Tangled Up in Blue: Corporate Partnerships at the United Nations, re-
leased at the meeting, which accuses corporations of "bluewashing" 
their image by hiding behind the UN flag.

http://www.ldb.org/iphw/new.htm

International Forum on Globalization associate Vandana Shiva said in 
a release that by aligning itself with powerful corporations, the UN 
risks becoming a vehicle for "the new colonialism of the Third World 
that rests on free trade and liberalized rules for investment and 
privatization and deregulations."

Vicky Tauli-Corpus of the Indigenous Peoples' International Center 
for Policy, Research and Education denounced the trend of the UN re-
linquishing economic roles to the World Trade Organization, World 
Bank and International Monetary Fund, organizations she charges have 
only contributed to global poverty. "It is our role to still ... as-
sert at the UN is not a body that should be giving priority to 
corporations," she said.

While the UN's role in the globalization debate was the subject of 
much criticism at the forum, Tony Clark of the Polaris Institute in 
Canada was one of the first to say the NGOs cannot simply fault Annan 
for the trend toward developing corporate partnerships. "This kind of 
system is not just at the global level," he said, adding that the 
problem exists locally in many countries. Bruno added that the NGOs 
support UN principles, but "the UN is weak" and that the NGOs should 
lobby for increased US support for the UN "with no strings attached." 
He also said that they need to act to make the corporations more ac-
countable. "If the UN won't monitor them, we will," he said.

Phyllis Bennis with the Institute for Policy Studies went one step 
further and said that, if anything, the United Nations has been a 
"victim of corporate control," while the United States has been the 
villain by exercising its influence. Bennis warned that "we are on 
the same side" as the UN but said the challenge lies in creating a 
new "internationalism" that rebuilds people's sovereignty and with-
draws from corporate domination. "It's up to us to reclaim the United 
Nations," she said to a resounding ovation (Candace Hammond, UN Wire, 
5 Sep).

**********
courtesy of Eberhard Wenzel MA PhD
Griffith University, Australia 
mailto:e.wenzel@mailbox.gu.edu.au

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