East African Business Week (Kampala)
Geoffrey Kamali
17 September 2007
Nairobi — Representatives of big multinational corporations in Commonwealth countries may soon have their day in the Courts of Law to account for human and environmental rights the conglomerates abuse.
This was one of the proposals advanced by lawyers at the Commonwealth law conference in Nairobi last week, seeking to tighten the noose around large companies for impunity and abuse of human rights.
"We should look at the criminalisation of these things and go beyond the veil of corporations as legal entities," said Tanzanian laywer, Mr. Charles Rwecungura.
The lawyers faulted host nations, mainly developing countries, for creating incentives that are sympathetic to multinationals.
They said this leads to abuse of workers rights and the environment with impunity.
They argued that while multinational corporations are recognised legal entities, they do not possess a conscious as human beings.
"They also don't roll themselves across the borders, they are carried across. We therefore need to cut the veil of corporate entity and criminalize the abuse of these rights," Rwecungura reasoned.
Some 1,400 delegates from all Commonwealth member countries attended the four-day forum, one of the runner-up events to the annual Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, set for Uganda in November.
The lawyers were reacting to a paper presented by a Ugandan lawyer, Ms. Elizabeth Kutesa, titled "Perspective on Corporate Accountability in the Context of Human Rights and the Environment."
The paper cited examples such as the illegal dumping of toxic petroleum waste in the waters of the Ivory Coast by a Dutch firm, the repression of the Ogoni people and subsequent murder of Nigerian activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa and a European limestone factory in South Africa.
Delegates described the firms as wealthy, too powerful and occupy the centre-stage in the new world order.
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