Article
Organizations denounce Nestlé’s new human rights impact assessment as a public relations stunt
Nestlé’s new human rights assessment, launched at the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights last week, is full of holes say labour and civil society organizations...Nestlé’s “Creating Shared Value” program is touted in the report as a strategy to address the needs of impacted communities, yet...there are significant discrepancies between Nestlé’s so-called values and its actual practice...The parameters for the assessment were set by Nestlé and involved a limited set of criteria that overlooked key areas including the human right to water...[In a] village in Pakistan...local leaders and members of the community have accused Nestlé of draining groundwater resources to produce its Pure Life bottled water...[I]n 2009 a number of labour and human rights organizations launched a campaign demanding that Nestlé be expelled from the UN Global Compact for trade-union busting and child labour in Colombia...The organizations also denounce the growing role of Nestlé in shaping public policy through its involvement in multi-stakeholder bodies...“Given the selective focus, limited scope and glaring omissions, the report cannot be seen as anything more than the company’s latest public relations stunt,” says Jorgen Magdahl of the Norwegian NGO FIVAS.