Cividep-India seeks to evolve numerous strategies to ensure that the rights of various stakeholders vis-à-vis businesses is duly respected and to strengthen the accountability of businesses for their impacts. Businesses need to demonstrate their ethical commitment hand-in-hand with their objectives to generate wealth and shareholder value.
Recognising the negative impacts of corporate activity and the dangerous consequences of growing corporate power, Cividep-India believes that it is important to make corporates accountable for their actions. The role of civil society in promoting corporate accountability becomes all the more important in a world where governments are increasingly diluting regulations applicable to corporations and privatising public institutions.
Dangers of Non-Regulation
The biggest danger of unfettered and unregulated corporate power is that it undermines democratic control over public resources and institutions by putting them in private hands. Therefore, making corporations accountable for their activities through strengthening regulations and through collective actions is crucial to prevent corporate abuse. Here, Corporate Accountability has to be distinguished from Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which is essentially a corporate driven concept and does not articulate in terms of rights. CSR driven measures by themselves are inadequate to address the real issues and vary to the extent of the philanthropic whims of each corporation as it is purely voluntary and non binding. CSR does not mean charity or welfare, but responsible conduct throughout business activities, i.e. vis-à-vis workers, suppliers, consumers, environment, community and government.
Given the global and complex web of business activities, accountability is difficult to realise. The plethora of company codes of conduct and industry codes, come with inherent shortcomings and are not effective means of regulating corporate conduct. Similarly, voluntary and non binding guidelines by international institutions, such as the UN Global Compact, lack the capacity to either effectively change conduct or redress abuse. Therefore, Cividep-India advocates for binding regulatory frameworks at the international level and strengthening of the same at the domestic level.
Cividep-India, OECD Watch & United Nations
Keeping in line with our collaborative approach, Cividep-India is part of OECD Watch, an international network of 88 civil society organisations from 45 different countries around the world promoting corporate accountability. The purpose of OECD Watch is to inform the wider NGO community about policies and activities of the OECD’s Investment Committee and to test the effectiveness of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.
Cividep-India has been following the developments at the UN-level closely and has been participating in the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, Professor John G. Ruggie’s work on Business and Human Rights.