Best Practice & Ethics
Companies failing children by violating corporate responsibility codes
Leading companies are failing millions of children by violating voluntary
corporate responsibility codes, which by themselves are proving wholly
inadequate as a means of improving children’s lives, a report by
Save the Children
and The Corporate
Responsibility (CORE) Coalition has found.
Why Corporate Responsibility is Failing Children
reviews three voluntary codes for companies: the
Breastmilk
Code, the Extractive Industries
Transparency Initiative and the
Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI). It finds all three codes are attracting
only a small sub-section of companies in each sector, and that there remains
strong evidence linking corporate promotions to reduced breast feeding, almost
no relevant companies are fully transparent about payments to repressive
regimes, and key aspects of the ETI, such as freedom of association, are
routinely ignored.
Save the Children and CORE are calling for companies that fail to meet the aims
of codes they sign up to to be penalised, and for governments to promote laws
that underpin codes of conduct at national level and support international
measures such as the UN human rights norms for business.
Alison Holder, Save the Children’s private sector adviser, said unless
governments enforce these codes companies will continue to put their bottom line
before the social and environmental impact of their activities on children.
Links
The Corporate
Responsibility (CORE) Coalition
Why Corporate Responsibility is Failing Children
Breastmilk
Code
Extractive Industries Transparency
Initiative
Ethical Trading Initiative
April, 2007 |
