ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns codes of practice in the human rights field, including labour rights, but there are important codes of practice in the environmental area which raise many of the same issues. The Sullivan and MacBride Principles focused primarily on labour standards, particularly equality of employment opportunities, in, respectively, South Africa and Northern Ireland. There is some indication that the Principles had several positive effects: that corporations found them useful by providing a focus for their social and political activities in South Africa. The Sullivan Principles became largely irrelevant when they ceased to reflect the aims of any of the major political forces for change in South Africa. The Sullivan Principles thus overlapped with international law norms but reflect much more a sustained attempt to export American conceptions of corporate social responsibility. The controversy surrounding the Principles, particularly the MacBride Principles, has denied them any such comfortable status.
