Without business and development, fundamental human rights could not be secured, the former EU commissioner, Mr Peter Sutherland, has said. Good business and human rights depended upon each other, he said yesterday at a fund-raising lunch for Amnesty International in Dublin. As attorney general, he helped ensure Ireland adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on which Amnesty bases its work.
Business "provides the economic vehicle to provide the fundamental human right to development; for nations and individuals". This was essential to the development and protection of human rights for the world's five billion people.
Economic development must include "environmental stewardship and social responsibility, and there must be a new acceptance of this responsibility".
"This is all very well in theory. In practice, business finds itself faced with new, complex and challenging situations. Business finds itself having to deal in a practical way with human rights issues. This is not a matter of choice but a reality."
Enlightened business people had realised that good business was sustainable and "part of a global society, not at odds with it", said Mr Sutherland, who is chairman and managing director of Goldman Sachs and chairman of BP.
Companies which abused their workforces or employed forced labour were not only breaching the universal declaration but foolish. "In a world of increasing transparency and global communication, such a company is foolish if it thinks such behaviour will not attract attention."
Codes of conduct had to be backed up by an assurance process and a way to verify that assurance process for shareholders, customers, workers and society.
Good business practice involved building closer relationships, not only with suppliers and distributors, but with non-governmental organisations; and working together to establish standards.
Mr Sutherland has criticised the failure to resolve the crucial question of reform of the European Commission and the Council of Ministers. This shortcoming "risks undermining the essential institutional construction of the Union", he said yesterday at the Irish publication of Europe: The Impossible Status Quo.
