Reuters TV Report on Business & Human Rights Resource Centre: 29 Jan 2005

Transcript of Reuters Television report on Business & Human Rights Resource Centre 29 January 2005

Introductory text on Reuters website (www.reuters.com)

Davos: Website Spots "Bad Inc"

Jan. 29 - Corporate behaviour - good and bad - is highlighted by a website launched this week.

Business-humanrights.org [www.business-humanrights.org] collates material about over 2000 companies around the world, highlighting abuses such as corruption or collusion with rogue-states as well as positive steps companies take. It hopes to provide an independent and unbiased source of information for investors, customers and the companies themselves.

Richard Edgar reports from Davos in Switzerland where the site has been unveiled.

Text of television report

Reuters:

[Shot of World Economic Forum delegates]

Half the delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos are from the world of business. 1000 chairmen, CEOs and directors, attending sessions with titles like “Does business have a noble purpose?”

Corporate responsibility is a big theme here. Some say talk is cheap. So, how do you find out what a company is actually doing, not just what it’s saying?

Let’s say you want to do business with a particular company, and you’re worried about its ethical record.

[Shot of the front of a Kuoni travel agency outlet]

Let’s say for example you want to buy a holiday from Kuoni, the Swiss travel firm, or, you want to buy shares in it.

Well, what can you do? You could call up the company, you could have a look at its literature, and see what they say about it, or you can walk across the street, to this internet café, and do something rather interesting.

[Shot of internet café, then of Chris Avery sitting at computer inside it]

And, once we’re inside out of the cold, as if by magic, here is Chris Avery from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, waiting for me. Hello Chris.

Chris Avery:

Hi Richard.

Reuters: 2

Would you like to take me through this website of yours?

Chris Avery:

Sure. If you pull up the Kuoni section of the website, it’s interesting, because it indicates that in July 2003, the UK government was urging companies to stop selling travel tours to Burma.

Reuters:

And if we look at the next headline there, just over a year later, it looks like we got a reaction.

Chris Avery:

That’s right. By August 2004, Kuoni had pledged that its subsidiaries had either stopped selling tours to Burma or were intending to stop by October 2004.

So for a potential customer of Kuoni who’s concerned about human rights in Burma, this would be very important information for them.

Reuters:

The website doesn’t censor or promote sources, nor does it accept corporate donations, giving it credibility it claims.

And that means companies are taking it seriously.

Gary Steel is an executive at ABB, the Swiss-Swedish engineering group, which has been criticised for working with the Sudanese Government.

[Shot of Reuters & Gary Steel talking in the snow]

Gary Steel:

I think the opportunity for people using the website is to see what goes well, what goes wrong, use the latter as ways of avoiding repeating the mistakes that others have made, use the former as perhaps inspiration for getting involved and trying some of these things in their own areas.

I think we need to be relatively modest here. It’s one website in a sea of websites. But I think that it’s a website that’s born out of a degree of pride that we’re taking some initiatives in a practical way, not perhaps some of the discussions that may go on in an environment like this, and we can share that with others, invite them to comment, and through the dialogue, we’ll further improve.

[Shot of the internet café]

Reuters:

One and a half million people click onto the website every month, and there’s a Weekly Update sent to 10,000 opinion formers around the world. So, does it get results? [clarification: the website receives over 1.5 million hits per month]

Chris Avery:

3 I think it does. We’ve had some companies indicating they’re extremely upset with the fact that we’re publishing information about their human rights record [we do not publish our own reports -- we post links to reports published by others about the human rights conduct of companies]. Other companies welcome it, that it’s a bit of transparency they think is long overdue. And the fact that we give any company the opportunity to respond to any allegation that’s on the site I think is an indication that we’re trying to be fair with companies.

[further response to this question would include the following 3 points:

1. The most important result our website can achieve is to play a role in encouraging companies to do no harm, to remedy any past misconduct, and to enhance their positive contribution. Already we see evidence of this. Companies are paying attention to reports on our website – because they know the site reaches reach such a wide and influential audience. Companies are responding to items that raise concerns about their conduct. Sometimes this is the first time they have responded to the concerns. Sometimes they indicate that the company has taken action to remedy the situation or is planning to do so. We invite such company responses and post them on our site; others then send us comments on the company responses -- we also post those comments.

Thus our website is becoming a catalyst: … for companies to reassess their conduct; and to go on the public record with comments about past conduct and pledges about future conduct; … for others, including local people affected by company operations, to see company responses, to put forward their own views, and to seek to ensure that companies follow through with their pledges.

We expect that our website will encourage more direct communication between companies and local people affected by their operations.

2. Our Weekly Updates, which we are launching in February 2005, will be a particularly effective means of getting results. These updates identify the most important reports and breaking news of the week – some reports raising concerns about a company’s conduct, others drawing attention to positive initiatives by business. The updates are sent free to thousands of opinion leaders worldwide: people in NGOs, government, media, companies, investment firms, international institutions, etc. When an item we plan to include in the Weekly Update criticises a company’s conduct, we will endeavour to contact the company in advance and offer to include its response alongside. This will keep the alerts balanced, and encourage companies to publicly address important concerns being raised by civil society.

3. Given that our website is used regularly by consumers, investors and procurement officers in their decision-making – and by agencies such as UNICEF in their selection of corporate partners – we are increasingly getting results indirectly, through helping others make decisions that make a difference.]

Reuters:

Tools such as this Resource Centre, as well as new legislation governing what’s acceptable corporate behaviour, are making it harder for companies to persist with doing business in what are judged as unsavoury ways or places. Kuoni may have pulled out of Burma, but the website suggests another 440 international companies are still there.

Business-humanrights.org doesn’t criticise them, but makes it easy to see exactly who.

Richard Edgar, Reuters television, reporting from Davos.