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Opinion

5 Aug 2014

Author:
Joseph Kibugu, Eastern Africa Researcher & Representative, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, based in Nairobi

U.S.-Africa Summit: Investment that respects rights can be “an act of justice”

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The potential for businesses to positively impact human rights, including by lifting millions out poverty and accelerating economic growth in Africa cannot be overlooked.  The CEO of General Electric South Africa recently highlighted, for example, the important role that multinationals can play in South Africa to create skills and generate employment opportunities, including in small and medium-sized enterprises.  However, the converse is also true – if unchecked, business can exacerbate poverty, and directly or through complicity contribute to human rights violations.  Sadly, the continent abounds with cases of natural resource-fuelled conflicts and displacement of local communities, leading to loss of lives and livelihoods.  

Africa is increasingly a much sought-after investment destination, partly due to its abundance of natural resources and as a growing market.  This week’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, meant to “stimulate trade and investment” is testimony of this growing importance.  The chair of the US Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs recently called Africa “the continent of the greatest opportunity of this century”.  How then should those at the Summit high-table ensure that Africans benefit from these opportunities, and their human rights are not compromised?

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, unanimously endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council, offer an important roadmap of internationally accepted standard for corporate behaviour.  Their three “pillars” reaffirm governments’ obligation to protect human rights; businesses’ responsibility to respect human rights – including avoidance of complicity; and the need for both businesses and governments to ensure that there is adequate and effective remedy in cases of violations.  So far, the US government has taken some important legislative measures to ensure that its businesses operating in Africa do not engage in corrupt activities or fuel conflict, through legislation such as the Dodd Frank Act and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. However, despite these commendable efforts, there are clear signals that more needs to be done.

Governments from both sides of the Atlantic acknowledged the need to improve access to remedies for victims of business-related human rights abuses during the recent UN Human Rights Council session on business and human rights.  With most supporting and a few abstaining, no African countries sitting at the Human Rights Council voted against a South Africa/Ecuador sponsored resolution on establishing an intergovernmental working group with a mandate ‘to elaborate an international legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises”.  The US did not support the resolution, but its delegate “shared the concern… [that more needed to be done] to improve access to remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuses”.  

A second resolution, unanimously endorsed by the Human Rights Council, was sponsored by Ghana among other countries.  It called for the extension of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, to facilitate a consultative process to explore “the full range of legal options and practical measures to improve access to remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuses”.  An open letter by 52 African civil society organizations has urged the Summit to ensure that “remedies are strengthened and obstacles to justice are eliminated” for investment that respects human rights.  There is no doubt that there is room to improve access to remedies for victims of corporate-related human rights abuses; and that governments and civil society agree about this.

This week’s Summit, while presenting investors from both sides with an opportunity to make deals, should heed these loud and also many silent voices of communities, who are paradoxically suffering as a result of the abundance on their continent.  The dreams of a resource-rich continent that are captured in the African Mining Vision, of a mining sector that “…is safe, healthy, gender and ethnically inclusive, environmental friendly, socially responsible and appreciated by the surrounding communities” should be translated into a reality.  

The expectations of local communities in oil-rich areas for development and equitable sharing of royalties are legitimate. The rights of children and mothers to be protected from dangerous and unhealthy working conditions in coffee, cocoa, tobacco and other farms are non-debatable.  A continent losing its revenue through transfer pricing and unfair tax practices by multinationals, then turning to their western capitals for aid is an irony.  Initiatives to spur agriculture by promoting large scale land investments that displace local populations and deprive them of their livelihoods are impoverishing, rather than empowering.  As our recent Eastern Africa briefing highlighted, land rights and labour rights concerns relating to agricultural projects are increasing dramatically – in 2012-14 there was a six-fold increase in the number of times we approached firms in the agricultural sector for responses to human rights allegations, compared with the previous three-year period.

Africans are looking to this Summit’s high table to make investment choices that benefit Africans.  The Summit participants must not ignore these voices.  They must steer trade relations in a direction that lifts millions out of poverty, translating to better social services including education and healthcare – not one that leaves people worse off.  To echo the words of Nelson Mandela, “overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity.  It is an act of justice.”  Africans are appealing for justice from this Summit.

Read more:

"52 African civil society groups call for investment that respects human rights, at US-Africa Summit"

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre's regional briefings on Anglophone Africa, Eastern Africa, Francophone Africa