Oil Firms Sign Human Rights Pact

Prodded by the U.S. and British governments, five leading oil companies agreed Wednesday to a new code of conduct, pledging to discourage police and private security firms from abusing people who live near their oil fields.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called the pact--signed by Chevron, Texaco, Conoco, Royal Dutch/Shell and BP Amoco--a “landmark of corporate responsibility” intended to prevent human rights abuses that oil and mining companies have been accused of committing, especially in developing nations.

“It demonstrates that the best-run companies realize that they must pay attention . . . to universal standards of human rights, and that in addressing these needs and standards, there is no necessary conflict between profit and principle,” she said.

In addition to the oil companies, the agreement was signed by mining companies Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold and Rio Tinto, and by a group of human rights watchdog organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The pact is the product of more than a year of negotiations sponsored by the State Department and the British Foreign Office.

The code is voluntary, but officials suggested that violations could produce a consumer backlash in an era of Internet-driven human rights campaigns.

“The global marketplace is a tremendously powerful tool for promoting human freedom,” said Harold Koh, assistant secretary of State for human rights.

Koh added that he expects the code to become a global standard by which all oil and mining companies will be judged, not just the firms that signed the original pact. He said the objective is to discourage companies from trying to maximize profits by cutting corners on human rights.

The code acknowledges that companies cannot operate without adequate security preparations. But it says the firms have an interest in making sure that police and private guards comply with the rule of law, including international human rights standards. And it says that companies cannot avoid their responsibility for human rights violations by maintaining that the abuses were inflicted by the local government, not the corporation.

The pact says companies should insist that security forces, both government and private, use the minimum force consistent with protecting company property. In cases where force is used, the code admonishes, an investigation must be conducted.

Security forces should be warned not to interfere with peaceful demonstrations and shouldn’t try to prevent workers from engaging in collective bargaining, the code says.

The agreement also says that people implicated in past human rights abuses should not be involved in providing company security.

Human rights groups have accused multinational oil companies of condoning serious human rights abuses in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta under a military dictatorship that has since given way to an elected government.

A senior State Department official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said conditions have improved since Olusegun Obasanjo was elected Nigeria’s president.

According to a report issued in February 1999 by Human Rights Watch, the military government used violent, repressive means to put down demonstrations by residents of the delta who complained that they had received little benefit from the region’s mineral wealth. Firms operating in Nigeria include Chevron and Shell, which signed the new code of conduct, and Mobil (now ExxonMobil), Agip of Italy and Elf Aquitaine of France.

In Myanmar, Unocal has been accused of condoning rights violations by a regime that the U.S. government calls one of the most repressive on the planet. In September, a federal judge in Los Angeles dismissed a lawsuit accusing Unocal of using forced labor on a $1.3-billion pipeline project. U.S. District Judge Ronald Lew ruled that although evidence suggested that Unocal knew the government was using forced labor on the project, the plaintiffs failed to prove that the company controlled the government’s activities.