Tuesday 23rd January 2007. 23.35 Guesthouse, Westlands, Nairobi

Back after a very long day. It has been brilliant, today Mary Robinson spoke at the CIDSE workshop. The section of the stadium was jammed to capacity, people were complaining that they couldn’t get in. Me, I was hanging on to the doorway, I had one eye on the stall that I had been manning and one eye on the events unfolding in the room. On the stand we had copies of the CIDSE statement in English, Spanish and French. We were also asking people to sign up to support the statement CIDSE was making. The copies of the statement flew off the table. Mary was the third person to speak, she was preceded by activists from Chad, Philippines and Ecuador who spoke of the impact of oil and mining activities in their countries (who incidentally were all women). Mary is backing CIDSE’s call. She reminded the audience that the worst corporate offenders for human rights abuses are the mining and extraction companies. This is not her testimony but that of the UN’s special representative on Multinationals who is conducting an analysis for the UN on what should be done in terms of some manner of global oversight for the workings of multinationals.

Business and human rights, this is the next frontier that needs to be tackled, the organisation for which she works (Ethical Globalisation Initiative) has a website, http://www.business-humanrights.org/ and she invited those interested to visit the website and find out what is going on in terms of reports lodged by activists and communities in the Global South on these multinational companies. Other sessions that I have been at over the last two days have highlighted the plethora of initiatives that exist to oversee the actions of multinationals. The defining characteristics are that these mechanisms are voluntary – there are many codes of practice put in place by business networks or by the likes of the OECD but they are all voluntary. They call for certain best practices to be observed, but if they are not, there is no sanction. Nobody goes to court, nobody gets fined, nobody goes to jail!

The CIDSE statement, click here to read, calls, in its opening lines, for governments of the international community to put in place clear policies and legal frameworks that would allow for an effective control of extractive industries and for these frameworks to be based on international human rights and environmental standards. The statement runs for two pages with detailed commentary and critique and guidance on what needs to be done.

As Mary left I got her to sign the petition, the last time I met her I was her guest at the Aras, it was 1993, I had returned from working in Kenya. Every year as President she invited all those who had returned from working overseas as development workers. While we didn’t offer her a cup of tea, I am sure she didn’t mind. Everyone was taken with her, a former head of state, not hanging around in stuffy diplomatic missions but getting down to the ground where people are discussing issues of marginalisation and exclusion. I think she was quite at home. She called on development agencies generally and CIDSE members in particular to become more focused on human rights issues and to make the connection between their work on the ground with the broader question of rights. Something that Trocaire is quite at home with!

Later in the session Boniface Dumpe, the director of the Centre for Social and Corporate Responsibility CSCR (an organisation supported by Trocarire) spoke of the plight of the people in the Niger Delta, the oil producing region of Nigeria which is the 10th largest producer of oil in the world. Boniface is an Ogoni. With some emotion in his voice he retold the events of the early 1990’s when over 80 people demonstrating against the activities of Shell were massacred by the military. I visited this community in October 2005. The sense of despair and trauma was palpable. The CSCR is trying to address the concerns of the communities through the fostering of a democratic and human rights culture, providing communities with a voice through which the people can articulate their concerns to the oil industry and Nigerian government. One of the CIDSE recommendations calls on governments in the South not to grant prospecting licences without there being free prior consent having been given by the communities. Does this sound familiar?

An issue that is coming up again and again over the various days is that of Climate Change. We in the North are only waking up to this now as we see more and more bizarre weather patterns and the very visible melting of the ice at the poles. Our carbon economy has however produced devastation in those regions where for example oil has been exploited. The people in the Niger Delta have suffered devastating environmental degradation over the last number of decades. We who have used the oil are now beginning to feel the effects and are reflecting on the need for some changes. We have failed to examine the oil economy and its negative impacts until it has impacted on us. Meanwhile climate change has been producing some devastating consequences in Southern Africa with record droughts causing massive food deficits. Mary Robinson called for the next social forum to be dedicated to facing the issue of Climate Change as a Justice issue. Do we believe we need to change? Do we believe that we can change?

Cafod, the equivalent organisation to Trocaire in England and Wales has launched a ‘Live Simply’ campaign. If we consumed less and expected less in terms of material consumption there would be less ravaging of the world’s resources. Do we expect companies that we invest in to only focus on producing the maximum profit? Might we consider a lower profit margin if we knew that this was the price for labour and environmental standards to be respected in poorer countries?

Are we up for change?