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Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

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280 <strong>Pitfalls</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Pipelines</strong>: <strong>Indigenous</strong> <strong>Peoples</strong> <strong>and</strong> Extractive Industries<br />

often include, especially where the company is a large one, a<br />

policy on indigenous peoples. Oxfam America has compiled a<br />

review of major mining, oil, <strong>and</strong> gas company Policies on FPIC<br />

<strong>and</strong> the so-called “social licence to operate,” which argues for a<br />

growing acceptance of FPIC. 29 Although primarily voluntary,<br />

a company can at the least be publicly criticized for breaking<br />

its own policies.<br />

The UN has taken a lead in some of these mechanisms.<br />

UN Global Compact, launched in July 2000, is an initiative for<br />

businesses, which asks them voluntarily to commit to aligning<br />

their operations <strong>and</strong> strategies with ten universally accepted<br />

principles in the areas of human rights, labor, environment<br />

<strong>and</strong> anti-corruption. The first two principles ask companies<br />

signing up to support <strong>and</strong> protect internationally proclaimed<br />

human rights <strong>and</strong> to make sure that they are not complicit in<br />

human rights abuses. The aims of course sound good, <strong>and</strong> in<br />

its favor, companies that have signed up have been ejected<br />

from the Compact for failing to report on their compliance. It<br />

has been widely criticized, however, as obstructing the necessary<br />

legally-binding regulations to adequately police corporate<br />

activities. 30<br />

The other major initiative in this area from the UN is their<br />

2011 Guiding Principles on Business <strong>and</strong> Human Rights:<br />

Implementing the UN “Protect, Respect <strong>and</strong> Remedy”<br />

Framework, which was produced by Professor John Ruggie.<br />

To some extent these build on the UN Global Compact, but<br />

attempt to be more universal in application. They stress business’<br />

role to respect human rights, while identifying that the<br />

state still has the key role of protecting human rights. Under<br />

the Framework, companies must avoid infringing human<br />

rights <strong>and</strong> address the adverse impacts of their operations. 31<br />

As noted above, there are now moves within the UN (via<br />

the Working Group on Human Rights <strong>and</strong> Transnational<br />

Corporations), <strong>and</strong> from numerous commentators, to operationalize<br />

the Guiding Principles. One of the areas that activists<br />

are concentrating on is the need for companies to conduct<br />

due diligence with regard to human rights. Ruggie defines<br />

this as the steps <strong>and</strong> processes by which a company underst<strong>and</strong>s,<br />

monitors <strong>and</strong> mitigates its human rights impacts. 32

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