ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the negotiations on the United Nations Center on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) Code of Conduct. It discusses the three major events in the 1970s that directed international attention towards the development of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for a sustained period of time. The events in question are the work of the UNCTC to develop an international code of conduct for Transnational Corporations (TNCs), the Nestle boycott and the development of the World Health Organization (WHO) International Code on the Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, and the activities of the anti-apartheid movement targeting TNCs with operations in or business relations with South Africa. The negotiations on the UN Code were primarily a intergovernmental process, in which the differences in perspectives and motives between the countries involved would turn out to be considerable. The UN Code was simultaneously to prescribe standards of conduct for TNCs and to charter principles for the treatment of TNCs.
