Corporate Conduct

Lunchtime Seminars at WHO to Broaden Horizons and to Counter la pensée unique

Alison KATZ, WHO

WHO’s staff association has launched a series of lunchtime seminars on various topics. Four have been organized so far, with outside speakers, on debt, trade, globalization and most recently on corporate conduct with particular reference to global health policy.

As the titles of the seminars indicate, the theme of this series ¹ is macroeconomic determinants of poverty, powerlessness and inequality. Poverty, as we all know, is the single most important determinant of disease and poor health. Poor health and disease, in turn, exacerbate existing poverty.

Subversive or supportive?

Many staff at WHO are still committed to the goal of Health for All by the Year 2000 – despite the delay. That commitment implies social and economic justice in the area of health. We have found, however, that this kind of discussion is often viewed as dangerously ‘subversive’ and ‘political’.

Let us remember, that at Alma Ata, more than 20 years ago, WHO made explicit the connections between macroeconomic factors, structural inequality and health and supported the call for a new and fair international economic order. This was, of course, an «evidence based» position – but it didn’t need this label – rather like the character in Molière’s play who discovered to his pride and delight that he had been speaking prose all his life. The evidence was nothing less than 100 years of public health experience.

Bear in mind also, that to approve and uphold the status quo today, with its grotesque distribution of power, is already a political statement. To question it is of course explicitly political – but it is supportive of WHO’s mission. Health is a political issue!

More or less!

Never has so much wealth been created as in the last 30 years; never has it been so unequally shared; and never has inequality grown so fast.

The richest 20% «share» – if that is the word – 82% of the world’s resources and the poorest 20% share
1.4% (UNDP 1996). In 1960 the richest 20% had 30 times more income than the poorest 20%; in 1995 they had 82 times more (Ramonet 1998) ²

In whose hands are wealth and power concentrating?

The short answer to this question is – a handful of nations, backed up by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization – all devoted to what is known as the Washington Consensus on neoliberal economics

And behind this ‘unholy alliance’ are the transnational corporations (TNCs).

Most of us are aware today that the transnational corporations (and a handful of wealthy individuals ³ ) are worth more than entire continents of poor countries. Government policy is heavily influenced – if not determined – by the interests of transnational corporations.

This influence is a serious threat to democratic decision making and to the free flow of information from independent sources. It is «la pensée unique» – the imposition of a single line of thought through TNC’s control of media and communications ⁴

It is felt today in all areas of national and international policy making, industrial and agricultural production, social security, education, military spending, information and communication and of course public health.

Transnational corporations (TNCs) and the management of international issues ⁵

On April 29 ^th , Judith Richter⁶ author of Holding Corporations Accountable, gave a presentation at WHO on corporate conduct and the use of strategic public relations (PR) to undermine international health policy making.

Corporate propaganda, as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy, is not a new phenomenon. However, it has become far more powerful, ever better concealed and ever better financed. Furthermore, it has gained a quite astounding legitimacy in the past twenty years of unfettered neoliberalism and ‘free’ market⁷ doctrine.

PR activities of all kinds have been enormously facilitated by the increasing concentration of media ownership and commercialization of broadcast media in almost all countries, which has accompanied corporate-led neoliberal globalization.

Drawing in particular on the case of corporate PR in the area of infant feeding practices, Dr Richter outlined the strategies commonly used to fight international regulation.

Issues management

Today, comprehensive PR strategies for TNCs almost always include issues management to shape rather than react to public discourse and decision making. ITS functions include intelligence gathering, assessment of the socio-political climate, manipulation of public debate and the exclusion of divergent voices.

Examples of strategic PR in action include industry lobbying of the US government to withhold its contributions to WHO if the latter continues to meddle with free enterprise through its critical work on regulatory codes and corporate activities; and implied, if not open, threats of libel , legal action to silence journalists and activists.

Image transfer

Image transfer is a critical and subtle strategy in which individuals, groups and organizations, by accepting sponsorship or engaging in ‘partnerships’ or ‘dialogues’ with industry, facilitate the transfer of their good reputation to the corporate sponsor.

If an issue cannot be ignored or hidden from public view, issues managers (as PR people are now called) will engage actively in public debate using strategies to delay, de-politicise, divert and fudge.

A prime example of such tactics is the announcement and development of voluntary corporate codes to prevent or delay tougher external regulation. In the early 1990s, dozens of industry associations published or updated environmental guidelines and codes for their membership when faced with calls for effective regulation in the wake of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (the Rio Earth Summit). The environmental code drawn up by the UN Centre on Transnational Corporations and the UN’s Code on Transnationals itself were defeated.

An example of diversion was the attempt by the infant food manufacturers to blame mothers in developing countries for incorrect preparation of the commercial products in order to divert attention from their aggressive promotion of infant foods.

For many years, divergent voices were excluded by labelling critics as ‘communists’ even as «Marxists marching under the banner of Christ». Today, the labels are ‘anti industry’, ‘anti technology’, ‘anti progress’, ‘irrational’ ‘emotional’ and ‘unprofessional’. Discrediting certain groups as incorrigible radicals who are confrontational for the sake of it is another exclusion tactic. (UNICEF has the distinction of having been qualified as such in the recent past.)

A key element of strategic PR is the setting up and operation of NGOs (which are in fact business associations) to gain representation for TNCs at every possible UN agency. The infant food industry made extraordinary efforts to gain entry in this way and shared its experiences with other TNCs in a newsletter on How companies can gain from NGO status.

Privileged status in international decision making

The UN makes no distinction between two major categories of NGOs, often referred to as BINGOs (business interest NGOs) and PINGOs (public interest NGOs). This has opened up all kinds of possibilities for increased corporate influence. ‘Civil society organizations’ is a term currently favoured to blur inconvenient distinctions. Ironically, TNCs now claim that as the engineers of wealth, they should be accepted as interlocuteurs of a different status from single issue NGOs.

When Nestle CEO, Helmut Maucher, took over the helm of the international chamber of commerce, he stated, with disdain for democratic procedure, in an article in the Financial Times (1977) that «governments have to understand that business is not just another pressure group but a resource that will help them set the right rules» «Under his presidency», readers were assured, «the business experience will be channelled into the decision making process for the global economy».

TNC confidence today appears boundless. Rather than lobbying at UN meetings, industry is now inviting high ranking UN officials to their own business roundtables in Davos⁸ and Geneva for instance.

Democratic global governance

It might seem obvious but as Carol Bellamy, Director General, UNICEF, says: «It is dangerous to assume that the goals of the private sector are somehow synonymous with those of the United Nations because most emphatically they are not». The question that needs answering is this. «Does the current trend towards PPPs not fundamentally conflict with the mandate of public agencies?»

Until recently it was understood that TNCs, for reasons of conflict of interest, have no role to play either in public policy making or in regulation. They are economic actors with a role in delivering high quality, reasonably priced products in a way that promotes or complements – and at the very least, does not harm – public interests.

Dr Richter pointed out that a fundamental principle of democracy – that decision making should not be based on ‘one dollar one vote’ – is currently being violated. It is critical, she asserts, to re-establish the UN Centre on Transnational Corporations to keep track of corporate practices in relation to public interest and policy making. In view of the enormous increase in strategic corporate PR and lobbying, Dr Richter concluded with a plea for reflection on how to recover space for democratic decision making and objective science.

¹ The Staff Association welcomes ideas from staff for other seminars. On the initiative of a staff member, a seminar on Emotional Intelligence was organized recently.

² Ramonet, I. (1998) Le Monde Diplomatique , Novembre, p.14.

³ Bill Gates ‘earns’ US$ 120 million a day (UNDP 1999) and alone, could finance WHO for 30 years.

⁴ The problem has now gone beyond influence. Through ownership, the media and the TNCs are one and the same. See for example New Internationalist (2001) Megalomedia: the voice of globalization No 133 April.

⁵ The text which follows is drawn from Chapter 8 of Judith Richter’s book Holding corporations accountable: Corporate conduct, international codes and citizen action (2001) Copyright, UNICEF, Zed Books, London and New York.

⁶ Dr Judith Richter is a sociologist and a registered pharmacist. She has a masters in the history of corporate public relations and a doctorate in international regulation of transnational corporations.

⁷ The market is far from ‘free’; it is very carefully fixed in favour of powerful nations and their TNCs. See for example Oxfam (2002) Rigged Rules and Double Standards.

⁸ At Davos in Switzerland, the World Economic Forum holds its annual meetings which bring together Chief Executive Officers of the world’s most powerful companies in privileged, mostly private discussions with the leaders of the world’s most powerful nations and (since 1997) with leaders of UN agencies and (since 1998) with leaders of selected NGOs.