The Global Compact and Its Critics: Activism, Power Relations, and Corporate Social Responsibility

Abstract

On June 23, 2004, a network of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other civil society actors, many of them associated with the Alliance for a Corporate-Free United Nations (ACFUN), held a public symposium to discuss the relationship between the United Nations (UN) and the issue of corporate accountability. The occasion for the event was another, quite different gathering, the Global Compact Leaders Summit being held the same day at UN headquarters. The Global Compact Counter-Summit, as the symposium was billed, was devoted primarily to voicing concern and criticism that the UN, particularly through its Global Compact (GC) project, was becoming too closely tied to corporate interests and was compromising its neutrality and integrity as an instrument of global governance. The following month, representatives from ACFUN and other groups participating in the counter-summit issued a Joint Civil Society Statement on the Global Compact and Corporate Accountability, calling for effective measures to enforce corporate accountability in areas such as human rights and the environment (Joint Civil Society Statement 2004).