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back to "Positive steps by business to promote human rights, the rule of law, and sustainable development in the wider society"

Business people raising human rights issues with governments

See also sections of this website entitled:

• Business support for initiatives promoting civil & political rights: Some examples

• Business support for projects promoting sustainable development / economic, social & cultural rights: Some examples

• Statements by business people about human rights and corporate social responsibility

Advocacy/dialogue with government, in Human rights -- is it any of your business? [A management primer] (Amnesty International UK Business Group / Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum, Apr. 2000)   

China / John Kamm: 

• John Kamm's Third Way -...In September 1991, Kamm [former president of Hong Kong's American Chamber of Commerce] resigned from Occidental [Occidental Chemical Corporation] and began his own business so that he could devote more time to working on prisoner releases [seeking the release of prisoners of conscience in China]...When China drafts new commercial laws, American businesses take a lively and vocal interest. When China jails bishops and censors the Internet, American executives say nothing -- or they echo the Communist Party line. (Tina Rosenberg, New York Times Magazine, 3 Mar. 2002)

• The Prisoner Information Project: A Status Report (John Kamm, U.S. businessman, testimony before U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific of the International Relations Committee, 30 Apr. 1998)

• China Lists Charges Against Detainees; American Given Details on 19 Considered Political Prisoners (Steven Mufson, Washington Post Foreign Service, 3 May 1995)

China / Phillips-Van Heusen, Reebok and Levi Strauss: A Letter to Jiang Zemin: The quixotic tale of three American CEOs and their ill-fated mission to change China from the inside (Tony Emerson, Newsweek International, 29 May 2000)

Indonesia / Reebok: 

• statements about business and human rights by Paul Fireman, Chairman, Reebok International

• Human Rights Is Our Business: Multinational Chief [Note: scroll down to 3rd article] (Human Rights for Workers, 6 Sep. 1999)

• Reebok Calls on Indonesia to Release Labor Rights Activist (Reebok, 24 Mar. 1999)