By Rev. David Schilling,
Director of ICCR's Global Corporate Accountability Program

There is a new phase in the corporate accountability movement. Today, while many corporations and financial institutions have returned to the new South Africa, they are facing a religious leadership committed to corporate accountability based on international human rights standards that address local community conditions and needs.

South Africa illustrates the complexity of corporate accountability work based on the development of global principles that have the potential to shape corporate behavior that meets the needs of local peoples and communities struggling to survive. The anti-apartheid struggle was successful in getting corporations to withdraw from South Africa. Nelson Mandela's emergence from prison in 1990, the writing of a new constitution, the inclusive elections in 1994 and the African National Congress decisively winning those elections has shaped a new South Africa that is ridding the law and the land of racism.

Similarly, the indignities of the pass laws, the "homeland policies," the banning of anti-apartheid leaders, the brutality of the police and military, segregated education, the unjust imprisonment of thousands of people and the daily dehumanization have largely disappeared.

However, the struggle now is more complex. The apartheid system has burdened South Africa with economic stagnation and unequal development made worse by the AIDS pandemic. Corporations have returned to South Africa but development has benefited a minority of its citizens. A recent New York Times article, "Rarity of Black-Run Businesses Worries South Africa's Leaders," reports that "whites own more than 70 percent of the land and dominate the banking, manufacturing and tourism industries. White-run companies control 95 percent of the country's diamond production, 63 percent of platinum reserves and 51 percent of gold reserves, officials say." (New York Times, November 13, 2002)

The New Leadership
South Africa's new leadership is typified by people like Bishop Jo Seoka, the first Black South African to become Anglican Bishop of Pretoria. Bishop Seoka has been instrumental in the creation of a new corporate social responsibility organization "Bench Marks Foundation of Southern Africa for Corporate Social Responsibility," an organization he chairs that was launched in Johannesburg in March 2001 by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

"The Bench Marks Foundation" is made up of five religious institutions in South Africa: The South African Council of Churches, CDT Foundation, Industrial Mission of South Africa, Ecumenical Service for Socio-Economic Transformation and the South African Catholic Bishops Conference's Church and Work Office. "The Bench Marks Foundation" is committed to providing leadership and advocacy on ethical and social issues related to the performance of corporations in South Africa. The organization endorses the "Principles for Global Corporate Responsibility: Bench Marks for Measuring Business Performance" (The Global Principles).

The "Global Principles": Beginnings
The Global Principles are a set of principles that spell out a business philosophy fundamental to a responsible company's action in a global economy. They were first developed in late 1995 by three religious organizations - Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) in the US, as well as Ecumenical Council on Corporate Responsibility of Great Britain (ECCR), and Taskforce on the Churches and Corporate Responsibility (TCCR) in Canada.

In October 2002 the Steering Group of the "Global Principles" Project was invited to South Africa by the Bench Marks Foundation to draft the text of the third addition of the Global Principles. This third addition would build on the first two documents published by ICCR, ECCR and the TCCR (now known as Kairos-Canada) and expresses a set up expectations of corporate behavior centered on the building of sustainable communities for people often on the edge of survival.

The October meeting was a fitting return to South Africa for ICCR. In 1971, ICCR's religious investor members joined the struggle to end apartheid by seeking the withdrawal of corporations and financial institutions from South Africa until the apartheid system was dismantled. South Africa became the focal-point of over twenty years of ICCR work--filing resolutions, campaigning, going to annual shareholder meetings, raising the moral imperative that good business practices meant the refusal of doing business with a government that oppressed the vast majority of its people.

Globalizing the Principles: Participation by the South
The Global Principles first took shape as a Northern shareholder movement. However, Bishop Seoka and three other South African religious leaders participated in the Hengrave Conference in Great Britain in 1999 that brought together 53 delegates from 22 countries to expand the "Global Principles Project" through the participation of groups from the South. That conference set in motion an approach built on the premise that the most effective way to press for global corporate accountability is to have strong connections between Northern shareholder groups who have access to multinational corporations and Southern groups who are close to impacts of corporate practices on local peoples and communities.

Thus, the project has grown from being a Northern religious shareholder project to a broader movement of religious and non-governmental organizations in the North and the South. It is appropriate that the "Global Principles Project" gathered in South Africa to participate with South African religious partners in a new phase of the corporate accountability movement.

The Steering Group-made up of Helga Birgden, Australia; Daniel Gennarelli, Canada; Hildebrando Velez, Colombia; Crispin White, Great Britain; Chan Kawai, Hong Kong; Jo Seoka, South Africa; and David Schilling, United States--gathered in a retreat center near Pretoria to begin its drafting work based on feedback received from organizations and individuals throughout the world. For a full week the group met from 8:00 AM until 10:00 PM discussing the issues, drafting text, debating until there was agreement. Animated discussions focused on such questions as: "How can corporations take concrete actions to address the HIV/AIDs pandemic?" "How can communities have a say in the type of business development that enters their community?" "When are the times when local communities must say 'no' to corporate activity that destroys community values, and after saying 'no,' how can they economically survive?"

Sustainable Communities
Key discussions centered on poverty, the gap between the rich and the poor, those marginalized by the current form of globalization and what enhances the potential for sustainable communities. The draft of a new introduction to the "Global Principles" says in part:

"Ecological degradation and social deprivation threaten the survival of human society. This document and its accompanying processes approach questions of the responsibility of corporations with the expectations of a Global Network of people and communities who hold these concerns as central to their agenda:

· A demand for a sustainable system of production and distribution and for the preservation of the environment for present communities and for future generations;
· An appeal for a more equitable system for the distribution of the economic benefit of production;
· An insistence for the participation of those most hurt by the activities of corporations in the decision-making processes of companies;
· A requirement for the creation of an awareness that corporations need to consider not only the response of consumers to their activities but that of all those who are stakeholders in their operations.
· A requirement for the opportunities of life and freedom for all humanity;

To meet these principles we believe that it is necessary that certain specific courses of action are followed when corporations are conducting their managerial functions in order that those who are affected by them will be considered and represented."

Corporations can play a positive role by establishing policies and practices that seek long-term business relationships in local communities, that provide mechanisms for regular consultation with community stakeholders and that evaluate all of its business operations in light of community sustainability.

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