APEsphere - Tags - Middle East

I attended a talk a few years back and I am struggling to recall where it was. It was either in Boston or in Washington. Anyway the talk was given by a recently retired general counsel of a mahor corporation - perhaps IBM, perhaps GM. The main argument of the talk was that corporations need a foreign policy. I thought the idea was instantly exciting and terrifying.

Exciting because back then I had recently written a paper on "Legitimacy risks and peacebuilding opportunities for businesses in post-conflict Iraq". The fact is that businesses have presence, relationships and power and they will have an impact on communities and even nations whether they have a policy or not.

Terrifying because, as that paper had tried to make clear, legitimacy was key, and in the Iraq situation the absence of inclusiveness and accountability pretty much assured that the reconstruction effort would lack local goodwill. Think about how the reconstruction contracts were allocated, the absence of community involvement in allocation, the lack contract winners of Iraqi origin, then the failure of firms that undertook the work to do so from the outset with a solid local outreach and inclusion approach.

There are plenty of extractive industry firms with a substantial involvement in foreign affairs, too often with dubious and opaque relationships supporting regimes run by corrupt elites.

It is the global technology firm - particularly though not exclusively the internet-based firms - that is new to the art of running aground on foreign policy issues in most recent years. So I was very interested to hear about a small private dinner hosted by Hilary Clinton last week with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey, Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie. The subject under discussion: how technology can be used to meet the nation’s foreign diplomacy goals.

It is a topic I touched on here during the first major upheavals in Iran when twitter played such a role: Iran, business models and the right to tweet speech. The basic argument of that post - that access to twitter is crucial to freedom of speech - has been echoed in a State Departent blog post which said the agency wanted to use twitter in a contest as a:

"worldwide platform in which people can discuss the meaning of democracy and exchange ideas from diverse perspectives."

My thoughts/questions are these:

1/ Is corporate foreign policy simply an alternate name for existing corporate responsibility issues with a global hue, like climate change or, in the internet company case privacy issues? Or is it - and I believe it is - something more, where corproations are taking on a responsibility to consider their impact on human rights within their sphere of activity in a more accountable, thus perhaps quasi-public way?

2/ how do we assure legitimacy? How can we bring the right kind of transparency and inclusivity to corporate statecraft to ensure that it is just?

3/ global corporations are based in dozens of countries. Is there a question of to which foreign policy it needs to align its own?

Do you have any views?

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Saudis continue on PR offensive against renewables

By Andrew Newton on 21 Jun, 2009 - 12:11 UTC

Renewables will never meet energy needs, the former chief executive of oil company Saudi Aram-co told the Royal Academy of Engineering last week.

Abdallah Jum’ah dismissed hopes that renewable energy sources will meet more than a tiny proportion of the world's energy needs as a pipe dream, while arguing that the world had more than enough oil reserves to fill the gap

I guess this isn't really news. It is a useful reminder that there are leaders in the Middle East, too, that have no interest in seeking a sustainable future.

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World's biggest offshore wind farm gets go ahead

By Andrew Newton on 13 May, 2009 - 08:26 UTC

The Thames Array will comprise 175 wind turbines located 12 miles off the Kent and Essex coast.

Investors decided to fund the £2.1 billion initial investment round, so enabling the project to move ahead. Once completed it could generate enough energy to power a quarter of the homes in Greater London.

The investors include E.ON (Germany), Dong Energy (Denmark) and Masdar (Abu Dhabi). Royal Dutch Shell dropped out of the project last year.

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Ajman tells companies to pay workers or ship them out

By Andrew Newton on 04 May, 2009 - 04:58 UTC

Companies have been told by the police and municipality in Ajman to pay workers their wages or else send the workers back home.

Some firms have not paid wages to workers for periods of several months, prompting protests and a 40% increase over the last three months in reported incidents of theft, robbery and shoplifting.

Three quarters of the UAE's population comprises foreign workers.

Authorities have promised stiff penalties and closure if workers' wages are not paid on time or if workers' living conditions are not up to standard.

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UAE to set new construction worker camp living standard

By Andrew Newton on 28 Apr, 2009 - 07:38 UTC

UAE Minister of Labour HE Saqr Ghobash announced yesterday that new minimum standards will be set for all labour camp accommodation in the Emirate.

According to the article from Construction Week, the office of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, will set accommodation standards including "the highest standards that have been established internationally".

The move follows a BBC documentary that highlighted what it alleged were filthy and overcrowded conditions in the camp run for workers of construction firm Arabtec.

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UAE minister expresses concern over human trafficking

By Andrew Newton on 23 Apr, 2009 - 11:36 UTC

Anwar Gargash, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, says luring foreign construction workers to the UAE under false pretences is human trafficking.

Workers often pay a high fee by recruitment firms on the promise of high wages. The reality is a cycle of debt.

The Minister points out that the overseas firms cannot be prosecuted in the UAE, but that local partners could be and should be prosecuted.

The plight on construction workers in the United Arab Emirates has received more attention since a recent BBC documentary looked at their living conditions in a couple of camps in Dubai.

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Gulf states to tax environmentally damaging products?

By Andrew Newton on 22 Apr, 2009 - 07:28 UTC

Member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council are considering the imposition of a "green tax" on environmentally damaging products.

A green tax in one of the world's biggest communities of oil producing states? This should be interesting.

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Arabtec worker camp opened up to journalists

By Andrew Newton on 17 Apr, 2009 - 08:38 UTC

Journalists have been given a tour of the worker camp in Dubai that was a subject of the BBC Panorama documentary "Slumdogs and Millionaires".

The unsanitary conditions shown in the documentary have been largely rectified, though incidents of overcrowding were still witnessed by the journalist who wrote this piece in the Khaleej Times.

The article refers to other steps being taken to prevent breaches of Dubai worker regulations.

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Panorama: Emirates Labour Minister promises action

By Andrew Newton on 13 Apr, 2009 - 06:29 UTC

Saqr Gobash, the United Arab Emirates Minister for Labour, has promised to review and act upon the labor rights allegations made in a BBC documentary.

The documentary, "Slumdogs and Millionaires", produced by the BBC's Panorama current affairs program, investigated living conditions experienced by Asian construction workers in Dubai.

Gobash has promised to check the veracity of the claims made in the program against Arabtec and United Engineering Construction, a subcontractor of First Group, and to sanction any company found to have breached the country's labor laws and international labor commitments.

Separately, the ministry has announced a range of initiatives to improve worker conditions in the country, including the issue of a booklet informing workers of their rights under Emirates law.

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Lives of Dubai construction workers put on show

By Andrew Newton on 08 Apr, 2009 - 11:18 UTC

A BBC documentary has revealed squalid living and working conditions of the tens of thousands of construction workers brought over to build Dubai.

While the CEO of Arabtec - the largest of the construction companies named in the report - has accused the BBC of shoddy journalism, the BBC documentary may require a more thorough response.

"Armed with a secret camera we sneaked into the camp to be met with the smell of raw sewage. Sewage had leaked out all over the camp, and workers had to create a network of stepping stones to cross it and get back to their accommodation blocks. One toilet block had no water supply and the latrines were filled with piles of raw faeces.

Documents obtained by us showed that a month previous to our visit, the Dubai authorities described the sewage situation at the site as critical. Arabtec had been fined 10,000 dirhams, approximately £2,000, for allowing sewage to overflow into workers' accommodation."

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Military contractor can be sued by Abu Ghraib victims

By Andrew Newton on 21 Mar, 2009 - 05:07 UTC

Detainees tortured at Abu Ghraib prison and later released without charge can sue U.S. military contractor CACI International Inc.

Four former detainees brought the action.

According to a press release issued by Common Dreams:

"U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee, of Alexandria, Va., denied CACI's motion to dismiss the detainees' claims which allege multiple violations of U.S. law, including torture, war crimes and civil conspiracy.

CACI sought immunity against the lawsuits and claimed that the actions of its contract interrogators at Abu Ghraib were beyond judicial review. Court martial and other testimony from the soldiers convicted of abuse link the company personnel to the abuse.

In a ruling important to accountability for government contractors in Iraq, the Court ruled Tuesday that "[t]he fact that CACI's business involves conducting interrogations on the government's behalf is incidental; courts can and do entertain civil suits against government contractors for the manner in which they carry out government business. CACI conveniently ignores the long line of cases where private plaintiffs were allowed to bring tort actions for wartime injuries."

The Court also rejected CACI's effort to shield itself from accountability by invoking the political question doctrine. The Court found "the policy is clear: what happened at Abu Ghraib was wrong." The Court reasoned "While it is true that the events at Abu Ghraib pose an embarrassment to this country, it is the misconduct alleged and not the litigation surrounding that misconduct that creates the embarrassment. This Court finds that the only potential for embarrassment would be if the Court declined to hear these claims on political questions grounds. Consequently, the Court holds that Plaintiffs' claims pose no political question and are therefore justiciable.""