In a timely follow up to my post yesterday on whether companies need a foreign policy, Google has effectively delivered an ultimatum to China.

The ultimatum essentially says "let us provide uncensored Google in China or we will shut Google.cn". Naturally, no one expects China to accede to Google's wishes.

The background an a good analysis are provided by Imagethief here.

Imagethief does not mention the meeting between Internet business leaders and Hillary Clinton last week, and I cannot help but feel that the timing of this announcement is linked to that meeting even if there are broader events leading up to this. Eric Schmidt is simply too close to the Obama administration to do this on the fly. Certainly to China it will look like it is, and if there is one thing that was acknowledged in that meeting it is that any stand US companies take in relation to human rights in China will be viewed by China as a proxy move by the US.

While Imagethief notes and the Wall Street Journal implies that Google's eventual withdrawal from China on human rights grounds makes it really difficult for Microsoft to remain, I would be very surprised if Microsoft, the State Department and others did not already know of the move before Google dropped today's bombshell.

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I was struck on reading about a Scientific American study that rates China's Three Gorges dam as one of the world's 10 best renewables projects.

I have no doubt that in terms of reduced-CO2 emitting energy sources this project deserves the accolade. But the Three Gorges project is infamous for the displacement of over 4 million people, as well as other forms of environmental damage.

There was perhaps no reason why the Three Gorges project should inevitably have led to rights violations. Perhaps it could have been pursued more slowly and on a slightly less ambitous scale and left rights intact. I don't know.

But clearly hard choices between different people's rights are going to have to be made and their conclusion pushed through with vigour. The not-in-my-back-yard attitude that is slowing installation of wind turbines across Europe has to be set against the fact that some 20 million people worldwide have been displaced from their homes by action of climate change. That - as the article points out - is slightly less than the population of Australia.

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Fifteen years after the execution of Nigerian human rights campaigners including Ken Saro-Wiwa, the families have settled with Shell Oil for $19.5 million.

The families of those killed maintain that Shell was complicit in the punishment metered out to the campaigners by the government. They brought their legal action under the Alient Tort Claims Act.

In agreeing to the settlement Shell admits no wrongdoing, instead maintaining that the settlement is being made to aid the "process of reconciliation".

According to the Financial Times report. $5 million of the award will go into a trust fund to aid the people of the Ogoniland region of the Niger Delta, an area that has suffered the full brunt of Nigeria's "resource curse".

The plaintiff's lawyers commented that this settlement represented another building block in establishing the liability of multinational corporations for human rights abuses committed abroad.

While a settlement does little to establish a principle, perhaps the ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York last week will at least make one step in the process easier next time: it held that Shell's Nigerian subsidiary - Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria - has sufficient US connections to be tried in a US court.

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John Ruggie, the UN Secretary General's Special Representative for business and human rights, made the comments to a UK parliamentary committee.

In reality, both international mandatory approaches and business driven voluntary approaches are problematic, he argued. The solution, at least in the short term, is to build a pragmatic patchwork of voluntary and mandatory initiatives.

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The pre-trial court hearing  has been delayed for the case brought in New York against Shell for alleged complicity in Nigerian human rights abuses.

Separately, however, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York permitted the plaintiff's appeal against a lower court decision to dismiss the suit against Shell's Nigerian subsidiary. This permits the plaintiffs to build a case against Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, which will also need to show that New York can have jurisdiction.

The case is being brought under the Alien Tort Claims Act.

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The latest annual Ivey/Jantzi report on the state of corporate social responsibility in Canada finds some improvement on last year.

From the press release:

"* Banks continue to top the charts in the corporate governance category, while insurance companies continue a two-year decline

* Despite the attention to diversity initiatives in the past few years, the ratings show that firms are still struggling with this aspect of CSR

* Human rights scores have improved slightly. This increase was driven by more attention to policies and reporting"

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Private members bills rarely succeed in the Canadian parliament, but Toronto Liberal MP John McKay's CSR bill has just passed its second reading.

According to the Star, the bill "would force the companies to live up to human rights and environmental standards when operating mines and oil wells in developing countries."

It is making its way through the legislative process in the face of strong opposition from the Conservative prime minister.

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The two year plan retains the priority of economic rights - the right to subsistence and development - above political and social rights.

Nevertheless, the National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009-10) was welcomed by international human rights groups.

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Companies merely doing business with the regime in South Africa had their lawsuits dismissed. That left those who provided tools for repression.

According to the plaintiffs, the car manufacturers Daimler, Ford and General Motors knew their cars were to be used to suppress dissent. IBM knew its IT systems were to being used to strip people of their rights. The action can also proceed against Rheinmetall Group, which owns an armaments maker.

These actions under the Alien Tort Claims Act are to be permitted to proceed. The cases against them describe classic examples of what we at APEsphere refer to as the "use chain". In other words, as the BBC report put its: "The judge disagreed with IBM's argument that it was not the company's place to tell clients how to use its products."

Claims against banks Barclays and UBS were dismissed.

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NorthStar Asset Management and Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) filed a shareholder resolution with the company last year.

The 7% vote received by the proposal was enough to persuade the company to move forward with NorthStar - a socially responsible investment manager - and UUSC to develop and adopt a policy.

The policy applies to all foreign and domestic operations of the company, and implements the human right to water as defined by the United Nations.

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