The Business and Human Rights Resource Center has published several letters and a certificate provided by Global Compact Board member Guillermo Carey, in response to allegations raised by a reporter of the Chilean newspaper La Nación. The author of the article in La Nación said that she had documents alleging that Mr. Carey was involved in the events that led to the kidnapping and assassination of Commander-in-Chief General René Schneider in 1970.
The four letters posted on the website of the Business and Human Rights Resource Center disassociate Mr. Carey from the allegations and support his current work on human rights issues. Mr. Carey also provided a certificate issued by a military court in 1993, which states that he was never brought to trial in the case over General Schneider’s assassination.
In one of the letters, the director of Revista El Periodista, Francisco Martorell, explains that in 2003 his magazine published a long list of people linked to the military regime and that Mr. Carey's name was included in that list by mistake. El Periodista later clarified that Mr. Carey should not have been on the list and apologized. According to Mr. Martorell, Mr. Carey has played a key role in working with indigenous communities and in social issues. "I hereby witness, based on our journalistic and research work, that Mr. Carey plays an appropriate role to the position he holds and that the attacks against him are petty and with a clear purpose. Moreover, as we certainly know, he is now leading an initiative in order the Chilean Courts of Law recognize their responsibility regarding the human rights abuses that occurred between 1973 and 1990 during Augusto Pinochet’s government", says Mr. Martorell.
San Francisco's mayor Gavin Newsom and the UN Global Compact are eying a former naval shipyard contaminated by radiation, heavy metals and other industrial toxins as the future site of a new green technology complex and climate change think tank. The proposal would turn a section of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, one of the most polluted places in the nation according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), into a "UN Global Compact Center". The center would likely include "a clean tech business incubator, offices of the UN Global Compact, and a retreat / conference center to facilitate the exchange of sustainability best practices and other innovations related to combating global warming". At a press conference organized by the mayor of San Francisco, the deputy director of the UN Global Compact Office said that the center would also host the offices of the Caring for Climate initiative and the CEO Water Mandate.
The City of San Francisco hopes to start the construction of the center in 2011 and to open its doors in 2012. But the project faces many hurdles before it can be realized, including the completion of a complex environmental cleanup, the approval of the city's Board of Supervisors and finding investors. The U.S. Navy, EPA and state regulators have been working to clean up toxins from the site since the early 1990s and have spent more than $500 million so far. Once finished, the land would be transferred to the city. "Our current schedule is that the land will be ready to transfer to the city of San Francisco in the middle of 2012", said Mark Ripperda, EPA's project manager for the site. "Timelines can always be changed, but that schedule is pretty solid." That makes the city's planned 2012 opening unlikely, but officials said the Navy could allow some construction to start before regulators finish their work. The parcel of land the UN Global Compact center would occupy would have more than two million square feet of commercial space in a campus-like setting, with views across the bay and to downtown San Francisco. The site would feature a conference center, UN office buildings and have an estimated cost of at least $20 million.
According to the Associated Press, the idea that the shipyard would finally be cleaned up led some members of the Hunters Point-Bayview community to greet the proposal with open arms. "Environmental justice entails not just having the shipyard cleaned up, but also revitalizing to create jobs and parks and affordable housing", Veronica Hunnicutt, chair of the mayor's Hunters Point Shipyard Citizens Advisory Committee, said in a statement.
However, not everyone is convinced that building a UN Global Compact Center at Hunters Point Shipyard is a good idea. Francisco Da Costa, a San Francisco-based environmental activist, believes that the U.S. Navy must be held accountable for polluting the shipyard and that it must first clean up the entire area. In a comment on the Mother Jones website, Eric Brooks, a representative of the San Francisco Green Party, said: "This center will be more like a destructive gentrifying 'Olympic Village' than a 'green' center. Note that the United Nations 'Global Compact' is not [...] even an entity of the United Nations, but is in fact a private corporate greenwashing enterprise."
This is a video of the press conference organized by the mayor of San Francisco to announce the plans for the UN Global Compact Center:
“The integrity of the Compact is another paramount concern. I rely on the [Global Compact] Board for guidance about ensuring the accountability of participant engagement. 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 you will work together to ensure that the accountability of the Compact is consistent with its mandate and resources.” - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in a message to the Global Compact Board.
“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.” - Steve Brant, independent researcher, theorist and speaker, in a comment on the complaint against CNPC / PetroChina.
“[…] with regard to established human rights bodies and initiatives such as the Global Compact, current corporate conduct demonstrates it is time to grow some teeth.” - Tabasum van Til, in an article about the complaint against CNPC / PetroChina and the double-faced nature of China’s state owned enterprises.
“As explained, we feel very strongly that Annex A [of the ISO 26000 standard] should not contain a reference to the Global Compact. But since our request for removal of the Global Compact reference from this annex has repeatedly been misconstrued as a general disapproval of ISO 26000, we wanted to emphasize that this is simply not the case.” - Georg Kell, executive director of the Global Compact, in a letter to the secretary-general of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
“Impressive as this start is, the Global Compact has significant shortcomings that threaten its future. […] Unless the quality of participants is placed above quantity, the Compact will ultimately fail to instill the norms embedded in its ten principles in the world market in any meaningful sense.” - Professor emeritus Robert W. Nason, in an article published in the Journal of Macromarketing.
“In light of your last e-mail to me, which indicates that you have no intention of abiding my request to stop using the Global Compact name inappropriately and undermining the initiative in India, we are left with no option but to remove your entity's name from our list of participants. This is effective immediately.” - Georg Kell, executive director of the Global Compact, notifies Suresh Pramar that his organization, the Global Gandhian Trusteeship and Corporate Responsibility Foundation, is no longer a participant in the Global Compact.
Global Compact Critics is an informal network of organizations and people with concerns about the UN Global Compact. On this blog we gather and share information about the Global Compact, partnerships between the United Nations and companies, and corporate accountability. It is not a database, but rather a collection of opinions, news items and background information. SOMO keeps this blog updated. If you want to contact us or become a member of the informal network, please send an e-mail to info[a]somo.nl.
The Business and Human Rights Resource Center has published several letters and a certificate provided by Global Compact Board member Guillermo Carey, in response to allegations raised by a reporter of the Chilean newspaper La Nación. The author of the article in La Nación said that she had documents alleging that Mr. Carey was involved in the events that led to the kidnapping and assassination of Commander-in-Chief General René Schneider in 1970.
