Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

Chapter 2.7: International Processes and Complaints Mechanisms
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the responsibilities of transnational corporations in relation to their
nature and activities. It talks about differentiated “spheres of influence”
transnational corporations could exercise, establishing three categories of
spheres: responsibility to respect; responsibility to support; responsibility
to ensure that they are not accomplices in violations of human rights. This
last category reinforces our attempt to establish responsibilities in relation
to transnational corporations for their actions in indigenous territories,
arguing the corporate complicity in violations of human rights. Therefore,
if the criminalization of certain activities implies the categorization of
corporate crimes, which exists on certain matters, nothing prevents us
doing the same thing in terms of human rights, or the violation of human
rights, for concrete actions of transnational corporations. Thus the thick
fog, surrounding the issue of transnational corporations as subjects of
obligations and responsibilities, is starting to lift.
In the last few years efforts have intensified, on the part of United
Nations, to give continuity to these initial, but thought provoking, efforts
about the effects of economic and commercial activities by transnational
corporations on human rights. In other words, it is creating an analysis of
the leading role and responsibility that economical globalization—through
actors such as transnational corporations—is having on the infringements
of human rights. To advance this, a new mandate was created within
the OHCHR on “Human rights and transnational businesses and other
businesses enterprises”: the United Nations Special Representative of
the Secretary General for Business and Human Rights, held by John
Ruggie. 65 The Special Representative made public the final report of his
investigation of this topic to the Human Rights Council on 3 June 2008. 66
The report aimed to respond to the necessity of creating a new framework
of rules, practice and institutions, which define the intersection between
business, commercial practice and human rights. The report recognized
the peremptory need for such a framework considering that: “markets
pose the greatest risks—to society and business itself—when their scope
and power far exceed the reach of the institutional underpinnings that
allow them to function smoothly.” 67 From there he proposed undertaking
a diagnosis of the situation of human rights in relation to the actions and
dispositions of commercial companies. The methodology consisted in
structuring a new categorical framework, based on three clearly defined
criteria; the necessity to protect, to respect and to remedy the damages
produced by the activities of transnational corporations and other
commercial companies.