By Corporate Europe Observatory
The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) is cultivating a "partnership" with the United Nations. It is pushing for the implementation of a "framework of global rules" that it plans to help draft.
The ICC represents the largest corporations, including General Motors, Novartis, Bayer and Nestlé. The ICC, which for many years has pushed for global economic deregulation within the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the G-7 (now the G-8, with the inclusion of Russia) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), now has its sights set on the UN.
"The way the United Nations regards international business has changed fundamentally. This shift towards a stance more favourable to business is being nurtured from the very top", ICC secretary general Maria Livanos Cattaui wrote in an International Herald Tribune column in February 1998. Cattaui quoted UN secretary general Kofi Annan as saying the time is ripe for consultation between the UN and business.
The UN's pro-business stance was emphasised by a February 9 meeting of 25 ICC business leaders with a heavyweight UN delegation headed by Annan. The ICC delegation included representatives of Coca Cola, Unilever, McDonald's, Goldman Sachs and Rio Tinto.
Following the meeting, the ICC and the Annan issued a joint statement declaring that "broad political and economic changes have opened up new opportunities for dialogue and cooperation between the United Nations and the private sector". The statement committed the two entities to "forge a close global partnership to secure greater business input into the world's economic decision-making and boost the private sector in the least developed countries".
The industry representatives used the occasion to call for "establishing an effective regulatory framework for globalisation". The ICC and the UN's Centre for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) agreed to co-produce a series of investment guides to provide "comparative information on investment opportunities" in the world's 48 "least developed" countries.
A March 1998 ICC/UNCTAD survey of 198 corporations revealed that 34% of European firms and 19% of US and Japan-based companies plan to increase investments in Asia. A senior UNCTAD spokesperson explained the attraction: "the lower costs for multinationals in the most affected countries".
The ICC's Geneva Business Dialogue (GBD), set for September 23-24, will "bring together the heads of international companies and the leaders of international organisations so that business experiences and expertise is channelled into the decision-making process for the global economy", according to an ICC press release.
The ICC boasts that the meeting "is welcomed at the highest level of the World Trade Organisation, the United Nations system and other international bodies". GBD attendees will include European Union commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy, WTO director-general Renato de Ruggiero, high-level officials from the World Bank and the Industrial Standards Organisation, as well as presidents, prime ministers and other top ministers from the US, Finland, Hungary, Thailand and Switzerland.
Business will be represented by executives from Unilever, ICI, Mitsubishi, Goldman Sachs, Lyonnaise des Eaux, Norsk Hydro, Siemens, BASF, Shell and many other global corporations. The high-level UN attendees will include UNCTAD secretary general Rubens Ricupero and UN under-secretary general Vladimir Petrovsky. Annan will address the GBD via satellite.
The ICC bid for a "partnership" with the UN is the result of ICC president Helmut Maucher's concern over the growing impact of environmental and human rights NGOs within the UN system. In one of his first interviews as ICC president, Maucher (who is also a leader of the European Roundtable of Industrialists) warned: "We have to be careful that they [environmental and human rights activists] do not get too much influence."
The ICC, "as the only organisation qualified to speak for every business sector in all parts of the world", is pushing for "a framework of global rules". "Governments have to understand", Maucher says, "that business is not just another pressure group but a resource that will help them set the right rules."
Maucher's ambitions for the ICC include formal status within the WTO: "We want neither to be the secret girlfriend of the WTO, nor should the ICC have to enter the World Trade Organisation through the servants' entrance."
The UN seems to have given up worrying about the growing economic dominance of transnational corporations. Until 1993, the UN had its Center on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC), which carried out research for the Commission on Transnational Corporations, an intergovernmental body with the mandate of developing a code of conduct for transnationals.
Corporations were extremely hostile to the UNCTC, which also developed environmental guidelines for transnationals and favoured investment sanctions against South Africa during apartheid. In 1993, the UNCTC was dismantled as part of a "reorganisation". Work on the code of conduct has stopped entirely.
Despite its grandiose claims, the ICC represents only the largest transnational corporations. The interests of these global players differ significantly from those of Third World-based local and regional businesses, oriented toward local markets.
Corporate Europe Observatory can be contacted c/- ASEED Europe, PO Box 92066, 1090 AB Amsterdam, Netherlands; e-mail <ceo@xs4all.nl> or visit <www.xs4all.nl/ceo>.
[Abridged. Distributed by Third World Network Features. This article first appeared in Earth Island Journal. Third World Network is also on the web at <http://www.twnside.org.sg>.]