ABSTRACT
It was just at the point that the debate on the Draft Norms was gaining momentum that a separate process was being unfolded elsewhere in the UN. In 1999, the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, issued a call at the Davos World Economic Forum for a ‘Global Compact among multinationals’. This initiative, which was to become the UN Global Compact, was established the following year with the explicit aim of harnessing ‘the power of collective action in the promotion of responsible corporate citizenship’. As this chapter argues, the purpose of the UN Global Compact was to
develop a voluntarist approach to securing corporate compliance with human rights standards. It was this voluntarist approach that was seen by its protagonists as its strength, and by its critics its greatest flaw. Following a discussion of the agenda developed by John Ruggie in his role as the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on business and human rights, the chapter will argue that Ruggie’s voluntarism was closer to the approach of the Global Compact than he, or his team, ever acknowledged. Indeed, this chapter will show that the Global Compact and the Ruggie Agenda have common political and philosophical roots. The ideas and ideologies that underpin both the UN Global Compact and Ruggie’s Guiding Principles, this chapter will argue, can only be understood in the context of a global economic order dominated by Global North states and their corporations.
