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Common EU NGO caucus Press Release 20 March
Partnership at Monterrey Development conference:
interest for business, not citizens
Global Companies need global
regulations, not moral persuasions
Partnership is the buzz-word at
the Global Development conference in Monterrey, partnering almost anyone,
business with governments, NGOs with international agencies, Bono with
Wolfensohn, rich with poor, and all together in yesterday’s Round
Tables on Partnership for Development. But the level-playing field that
the word and the common table suggest do not exist, says Lars Landfald
from the Development Forum in Norway: “When the World Bank or
governments are talking about partnership in development, they basically
mean to get the private business sector into development financing. They
want the transnational companies to step up foreign direct investments.
The talk about equal partnership of such different actors as business
and NGOs is missing the point. Companies work for their own profit, not
for people’s development. We work for raising public responsibility to
provide for a sustainable redistribution of the global wealth. Equal
partnership relays on a recognition of our role to balance the huge
influence transnational corporations already have.”
In 2000, foreign direct investment grew by 18 percent to reach 1,3
trillion USD, a continuous spur driven by the more then 60.000
transnational corporations and their 800.000 affiliates abroad. The
sales of the top 200 TNCs are now equivalent to more than one-quarter of
world economic activity. The growing mobility of transnational
corporations has made it ever more difficult for citizens and
governments to hold them accountable for their actions. Unchecked
corporate behavior runs to the detriment of sustainable development. It
leads to a race to the bottom of social and human rights standards and
gender equality, and is responsible for severe environmental degradation,
as many well-documented cases show. In the already decided Monterrey
outcome document, developing countries commit to sound policies to
attract foreign investments, but there is no mentioning at all of sound
frameworks for human rights or social and environmental standards that
foreign investment should be accountable to.
“The Monterrey conference totally fails to confront the deficits in
the governance of international business activities. In the Monterrey
Consensus, you will not even find a reference to existing voluntary
initiatives, such as the UN’s Global Compact”, said says Lioba Diez
from Kairos Europe, “we should not let governments get away with that.
We expect them to declare their commitment to socially and
environmentally responsible investment. Otherwise we should stop talking
about partnerships in development with the private sector. There can’t
be partnership as long as there are no binding rules for its strongest
partners”.
European NGOs in Monterrey demand an independent assessment of the
impact of foreign direct investment on the realization of UN development
goals. Recent empirical evidence shows that the linkage between foreign
investment and development is far from clear. NGOs say they will step up
activities to press for a legally binding convention on corporate
accountability during upcoming negotiations for the Johannesburg World
Summit on Sustainable Development, to be held in September 2002.
For further information: (national contacts)
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