At the beginning of the Global Compact Board meeting on July 24, a message of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was delivered by his Deputy Chef de Cabinet, Kim Won-soo.In his message, Mr. Ban said that he regretted that he could not participate in the meeting. He welcomed the newly appointed Board members and said that the Global Compact can play a key role in finding solutions for the global economic crisis and other challenges, "by helping to restore confidence in the private sector and facilitating the transition to a low-carbon economy".
The UN Secretary-General also said that the integrity of the Compact is a "paramount concern" and that he relies on the Board "for guidance about ensuring the accountability of participant engagement". Moreover, he said: "The Compact is voluntary in nature, providing a forum for learning and dialogue to advance United Nations goals. It was never meant to be a sanction-based initiative, which I understand might be a disappointment to some. I trust [the members of the Board] will work together to ensure that the accountability of the Compact is consistent with its mandate and resources."
One of the most important points on the agenda of the Board was a complaint against CNPC / PetroChina. In February this year, over 80 civil society organizations submitted an open letter to the Compact in support of a formal complaint against PetroChina, a Global Compact participant. The civil society groups allege that CNPC, PetroChina's parent company, is a major financer of the Sudanese government and that it indirectly supports the Sudan regime that is responsible for the human rights crisis in Darfur.
© Photo by UN Photo / Evan Schneider.
1 comments:
In registering a formal complaint against PetroChina with The Global Compact, these civil society groups miss the Compact's main contextural / philosophic foundation: that becoming the best corporate citizen an organization can be is a Process... and that this process - to be effective - must permit organizations to be "less than perfect" at the beginning of their journey to optimal corporate citizenship behavior.
CNPC (PetroChina's parent company) may very well be responsible - in part - for the human rights crisis in Darfur. But this doesn't mean that CNPC can't help eliminate that crisis is the future. In fact, making change happen "from the inside" is a recognized approach in the world of developmental theory.
"You can only make peace with your enemies" is a truism known for its use in the Palestinian - Israeli conflict. But it's also applicable here.
By allowing corporations that have some association with the negative side of society to participate in The Global Compact, civil society is opening the door to those organizations getting support from The Global Compact community to figure out how to help eliminate those negative parts of society they have some association with.
This form of Change Management is not meant to replace outside pressure from NGO's. It is meant to be complimentary to that outside pressure. The supportive Yin to that outside pressure's Yang. Change can come from both external and internal motivational forces. The Global Compact's focus is on internal, asperational motivation.
For more information about this form of Change Management, I recommend the NGO community study The Global Compact's Performance Improvement Model (and that model's sister performance improvement initiatives: the Baldrige National Quality Program in the USA ( http://www.quality.nist.gov ) and the European Foundation for Quality Management ( http://ww1.efqm.org/en/ )
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