Center for Business and Human Rights

"Three things need to change. First and most immediately, there is a pressing need for greater coordination, burden-sharing, and transparency among the states. The federal government has the unique capacity to survey existing needs and distribute crucial supplies among the states in a rational and efficient way."

Responding to the spread of COVID-19 cases in the U.S., Amazon has joined a growing number of companies directing their executives to suspend domestic travel “until further notice.” As reported in The New York Times, Dave Clark, Amazon’s Senior Vice President in charge of the firm’s worldwide operations, told his employees that no group or team meetings requiring travel should be planned sooner than the end of April, “by which time hopefully we have a better sense of the virus, its spread and impact.” In this internal message, Clark stressed that “we are watching this situation closely with a focus on the safety of our teams.” All of this seems prudent and sensible, all the more so because two Amazon employees in Italy, and a third in Seattle, recently tested positive for the virus, which has claimed more than 3,000 lives worldwide.

At the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos last month, a group of 140 of the world’s largest companies proposed a core set of common metrics to track the environmental and social records of companies. This initiative is sorely needed. It follows several other efforts to shift businesses from the singular focus on maximizing short-term shareholder returns that has defined corporate culture in America since the 1970s. 

Last week in Brussels, members of the European Parliament met to assess the current state of Bangladesh’s massive ready-made garment (RMG) industry, now the second-largest in the world and a major supplier to Europe. It has been almost seven years since the Rana Plaza factory complex collapsed, killing more than 1,100 workers, mostly young women, and injuring 2,500 others. Rana Plaza generated worldwide headlines and searing images that still color many people’s perceptions of Bangladesh and the broader risks to workers in global supply chains. 

At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, Richard Edelman released the 20th Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual public opinion poll that tracks attitudes towards government, corporations, civil society, and the media in more than 20 countries. One of the key takeaways from this year’s report is the pressing need for corporate leaders to assume a more central role in addressing key societal issues, such as global warming and rising inequality. 

Last month, Senator Marco Rubio called for what he termed “common-good capitalism.” In a speech at Catholic University that received too little attention, Rubio outlined a framework that embraces the free market but demands more from it than short-term financial gain. He called for a system that ensures dignified work for employees rather than focusing myopically on the celebration of corporate profits. 

On December 10, the United Nations will mark the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In an era of spreading nationalism and gross violations in places like Yemen, Myanmar, South Sudan and Venezuela, it is fair to ask whether the Universal Declaration and the global human rights movement have improved the human condition.  And given these contemporary challenges, there’s the further question of where we go from here.

This past weekend several dozen journalists and activists from around the world convened in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Under the auspices of an organization called the Social Change Initiative, on whose board I sit, they came together to discuss the crisis facing news gathering and dissemination in deeply divided societies.  All of our societies seem deeply divided these days, and the declining role of newspapers as messengers of truth is an important factor. As in the U.S., newspapers in the UK and Ireland are struggling financially, upended by the disruption of an advertising model that is no longer sustainable. And as the news media decline around the world, online platforms take their place with few, if any, of the important journalistic checks to ensure truth.

In a recent opinion piece in The Washington Post, Alex Karp, the chief executive of a data-analysis company called Palantir, warns that when Silicon Valley executives “try to impose their moral framework on America, something has gone seriously and dangerously awry.” Public policy decisions, he adds, need to be made by “elected representatives and judges, not by unelected engineers running global businesses.” But Karp fails to acknowledge that companies like Palantir decide with whom they do business and have an obligation to address the harmful consequences of their business relationships. This responsibility rests not only on tech companies but on all corporations.

YouTube has a serious problem with disinformation, but the company’s senior leadership continues to wish it away. A recent blog post by YouTube’s CEO, Susan Wojcicki, exemplifies the problem. Wojcicki celebrates the many ways the company adds value to society while sidestepping it’s most difficult challenges. Not least among these challenges is the manipulation of video images on the YouTube platform to advance various political agendas.