Okay. Thank you so much. First to the Reverend Dr. Liz Carmichael for inviting me to speak to the conference and
to my good friend Dr. Izabella Button for encouraging Liz Carmichael to invite me.
And thanks, Professor Caplan, for the kind introduction.
To say that the right Reverend Dr. Rowan Williams is a tough act to follow is modesty, what you call in these parts British understatement.
But I just appreciate your extraordinarily insightful presentation.
And I think of you as I'm sure everybody in the room and beyond does, is the distilled essence of knowledge and wisdom.
It really deeply appreciate your comments and humbled to follow you, as I'm sure we all have to have listened to you.
So thank you. So I am indeed going to take a different tack here, although like Rowan Williams coming at it initially from an historical perspective,
maybe drawing just a bit on having earned a history degree down the road here just a bit just a few years ago.
But I'm going to go light on the history until we get to the last several decades, and I'll get into it a little more deeply then.
But like Rowan Williams, I also divide my presentation into three parts to support the fundamental proposition that economic actors,
business and especially multinational corporations are not only intertwined with war and peace,
with conflict, with the drivers impacts and consequences of conflict, but also can,
should and indeed must be conscious, responsible and accountable actors in the world of peace and conflict.
I worry too much, too often that we view these vast,
impersonal forces and actors and huge multinational corporations in the billions
of pounds and euros and dollars in the end behind them as impenetrable.
I and I really want to challenge that default assumption by talking about the efforts in recent decades,
but very specifically what many of us are up to now over the last year in trying to accelerate
and to complete the exit of Western companies from Russia following Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
So I'll first give a historical perspective of some antecedents or precedents from recent decades that take us to this moment
that has really crystallised the debate around the responsibilities of multinational corporations in the conflict arena and,
I hope, galvanised action. And then second, I'll talk about some of the issues and dilemmas that multinational corporations are dealing with,
as some are trying to get out of Russia, those that have not.
And some of the dilemmas that we on the side of those who engage and try to persuade,
cajole and at times confront companies have to think about ourselves from a human rights perspective.
And then finally, I'll try to draw out very quickly some of the lessons,
the consequences and further implications of what we've seen in recent months for a broader notion of what I call,
I hope, not too grandly or naively what could be a new idea of geopolitical corporate responsibility.
So first, back to the history. And to make a sweeping comment that merely condenses two millennia of human
experience in just a few sentences before we get to the middle of the 20th century.
But it's a statement of fact, but one that is volumes have been written about the the world of commerce and trade,
of capital and labour have been intertwined with war and peace, with conflict since the ancient world.
And fast forward through ancient from ancient slavery to the structures and strictures.
Sort of medieval feudalism, which I studied down the road while doing supposedly modern history in.
Fast forward, then even to the 18th century and beyond the rise of the East India Company and the emergence of multinational corporations as agents,
instruments of imperialism, colonialism, expansionism, and not just the British empires,
but of others in the whole tragic history of slavery and the deep, deep, deep complicity of private actors,
business actors that helped build and enrich but also morally diminish this great country and so many others,
including my own, with the transatlantic slave trade.
And finally, a reckoning on both sides of the Atlantic about that tragic legacy that is still with us in the 21st century.
But then to fast forward again to five pivot points in the last eight decades, actually four in the last eight decades,
that really set the stage for the actions and dilemmas that we've seen as companies have exited
again in completely from Russia in the last 14 months since Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
So I want to start first with an area that I spent two years working on day and night on behalf of the U.S. State Department in the mid 1990s.
And that was the deep complicity of business in Nazi Germany and especially in the Holocaust.
And historians have written for decades about German big business aiding and abetting Hitler's rise to power.
We didn't understand very well until the mid to late 1990s when there was a global movement with the U.S. and UK governments tip of
the spear at the tip of the spear to come to grips with the then previously hidden financial and economic dimensions of the Holocaust.
And you'll recall, in that period of the mid-to-late nineties, the intense focus on the Swiss banks,
their icy indifference to Holocaust survivors, victims families who were unable to access dormant accounts after decades.
The focus on the huge German industrial companies willingly employing slave labour of Jews,
of Soviet prisoners, of Roma, of homosexual gay people or other marginalised people, political dissidents.
If they weren't killed in concentration camps, they were worked to death in the slave factories.
So we had a huge reckoning around that.
And finally, in the in the 1990s, and we still read every month or two about the restitution of Nazi looted art.
This is a continuing saga from the 1940s, and then that takes us to the 1970s and eighties to the second major antecedent.
And I'm looking at Liz Carmichael. I've just had the pleasure of getting to know since yesterday and knowing of her extraordinary work,
first as a doctor and then as a conciliator peace builder in apartheid South Africa of the anti-apartheid movement,
which arose in the mid to late 1970s.
I recall it well in my undergraduate days at Berkeley in the late seventies, and then here again a couple of years later.
And that was the most extraordinary example we've seen of companies consciously exiting a racist,
authoritarian state under tremendous pressure from activists and clergy and responsible investors in their very early initial stages.
And that man, Nelson Mandela, credited, as did that Bishop Tutu, that exodus of Western companies,
of having exerted political and moral as well as economic and financial pressure on the apartheid regime.
That then takes us to the next antecedent or precedent which played out in the early to mid 2000.
And that was the genocide at least as the US government called it, in Darfur and the international attention.
On those atrocities and killings in Darfur and the divestment movement,
which was largely but not entirely an American agenda that took substantial assets out of companies,
particularly oil and infrastructure companies that were supporting the regime in Khartoum.
That was the biggest exercise we had seen of divestment, at least in the United States since the apartheid,
the anti-apartheid divestment movement of the mid-seventies to the mid eighties.
And it's one now that is on many of our minds in recent days for obvious reasons,
as we see this these terrible civilian casualties and the promise we had hoped two years ago of the
democratic transition in Sudan dashed by this internecine conflict within within the military.
And then finally, that takes us to the Russian invasion, Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and much of it,
which really now is the second part of of my presentation and much of the focus in the media and the public policy discourse
has appropriately focussed on this massive wall of economic and financial sanctions developed by and imposed by the US,
the UK, the EU coordination through the G7.
And those sanctions were regime.
That sanctions regime was under development beginning in the autumn of 2021 in anticipation of based on U.S. intelligence,
in particular, of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which, of course, happened on the 24th of February 2022.
And those sanctions were imposed some within hours, others days, weeks,
and continue to mount the less visible and well understood dimension of this financial and economic prong,
if you will, of the conflict is the exit of foreign companies, mostly European, UK, North American, U.S., Canadian, some from Japan, Australia.
And the numbers are significant.
It's actually the largest exodus that we've seen of companies from a conflict situation or based on any
principles whatsoever since that massive exodus from apartheid South Africa in the late seventies to mid 1980s.
What's been striking about this exodus is that it began to happen within 72 or 96 hours after the invasion,
with the initial announcements that last weekend of February last year by Shell and BP in anticipation of sanctions against the oil and gas sector.
And that became the basis really of a parade out not only from the oil and gas sector, but from other sectors as well.
And to be frank, I think there was a lot of I don't want to be so crude, of course, to suggest that it was PR reasons,
but let's dress it up a little as reputational and follow the leader in the sector and let's not get caught out.
There were some ethical considerations by some companies,
but it's been striking how few of the companies have exited have explicitly cited human
rights or an attack on the international rules based order as the reason for their exit.
And that's one of the missions of BE for Ukraine,
is to make these companies more conscious and responsible actors by stating explicitly their reasons for exit,
as well as for accelerating the exit of others.
So about 40% and there's been a war over the data, as there often is in such controversial contexts.
But about 40% of over the 3000 foreign companies that were operating in Russia at the
time of the invasion have announced their withdrawal or suspended their activity.
About another 40% remain in Russia, with less than 10% having exited completely.
Another cut of the numbers. And again, there's some discrepancies.
We've some of us worry that we are sometimes mixing apples and oranges with the analysis, but.
Over 1700 companies, foreign companies remain operating in Russia, but over 1400 are have been taking are taking active steps to leave.
That's another way of slicing and dicing the numbers here.
The narrative until the last couple of months has been focussed on the outside world, acknowledging and plot and applauding this exodus.
What we've been doing for BE for Ukraine is also to acknowledge and applaud the exodus of Western companies from Russia.
But to put the focus at least as much even more on the other side of the ledger of those companies remaining.
And to make the case both generally and sectoral and sector specifically and companies specifically, why companies still in Russia can leave.
So we wrestled with these issues.
It would be wonderful to look at this problem in purely political and moral
terms and to say out and to expect that buttons are pushed and exits are made.
It's a little more complicated. There are indeed legal and even ethical complexities in addition to the moral and
political certainties that should argue for the exit of foreign companies from Russia.
The legal, their legal and ethical complexities that have to be addressed, they can't be simply dismissed.
Above all, the safety, the security of the Russian employees of foreign enterprises operating in Russia,
their contractual obligations, their bankruptcy strictures for companies that try to shut down or claim bankruptcy.
There's concerns over nationalisation and expropriation.
There's the difficulty of finding finding a buyer.
And sometimes those buyers represent interests, whether oligarchs or not, that are seen close to the Kremlin, close to Putin directly.
And, you know, one has to ask reasonably whether the selling to such Russian interests is a net positive.
There are legal barriers to exit. There's now exit tax that's being imposed that goes right to the Russian treasury and therefore,
by definition, at least indirectly funds the war machine,
the war effort, the killing of Ukrainian civilians, the soldiers, as well as the Russian conscripts put into the trenches.
So these are legal and ethical complexities to be not to be dismissed, but to be addressed where we have little patience, ah,
for the companies that simply cite legal or even ethical complexities and assume that they're impossible to, that they're insurmountable.
And to us that's really a unacceptable position.
You know, our view, our base view, baseline view here is that companies remaining in Russia are fundamentally complicit,
at least indirectly, in the war effort of most of all by paying taxes at this point to the regime that do fund this war effort.
And that's the most obvious form of complexity of complicity.
There's also the exposure of foreign companies, according to Russian law that was invoked last September of 2022 for employees of Russia,
foreign companies to face mandatory conscription.
So foreign multinationals are still operating in Russia in the uncomfortable position of the risk of some of their
employees being taken out of the workplace and put into the trenches in in in Donbass or elsewhere in southern Ukraine.
So and then there are dual use technologies and weapons, and those are mostly under sanction at this point.
But there's still some gaps in the sanctions regime that are the U.S. and others are trying to close.
But I do want to mention that you emphasise that there are some legitimate ethical considerations here, ethical and indeed political.
And one is in the technology realm, the other is in the pharmaceutical and medical realm.
On the technology side, most.
Tech exports are under sanctions. U.S.-U.K.
EU different jurisdictions, particularly the ones that have military applications.
But a case was made to the White House and the U.S. Treasury last spring by a coalition of NGOs led by Access Now,
which is stands for Internet Rights and the Wikimedia Foundation,
to carve out an exception for Internet service providers on the grounds that from a democracy and human rights point of view,
that the last thing we should want to do is to cut off Russian civil society, Russian civilians from the international Internet.
And in my view, that was a reasonable and responsible and the essential compromise to make in the service of a greater good.
It gets trickier when we get to essential medicines for pharmaceuticals.
And I know that Carmichael is a former medic and others perhaps in the audience.
And, you know, my views of this are blissfully uninformed by any medical expertise, but are informed somewhat by engagement.
In recent months, with two or three of the major global pharma companies which have chosen to stay in,
and they cite essential medicines and there is indeed a list put together by the World Health Organisation.
And one can make a reasonable argument that for human rights and humanitarian reasons it is necessary,
indeed essential to continue to provide such essential medicines to Russian civilians.
There's a counterargument I hear from Ukrainian colleagues who say that responsibility is on the Russian government.
They have to do that. The Western companies don't. And for that matter,
most of the Western companies that are claiming essential medicines and staying in
are also continuing to sell non-essential medicines that are not on the W.H.O. list.
And other medical devices, including over-the-counter items that really cannot be justified, is absolutely essential and irreplaceable.
But there's some shades of grey when we come to that arena where we do have to take into account,
in my view, the ethical considerations from a human rights and a humanitarian point of view.
But then we get to excuses and we go from reasonable to frankly absurd, in my view, rationales.
So poor no rijkaard the international liquor conglomerate produces Beefeater Gin,
which has a little bit of brand resonance in this country in particular.
They resumed operations, suspended operations initially after the war, and then resumed exports to Russia.
I don't think that gin is as refreshing as it is in the spring and summer and tonic or otherwise is essential.
And likewise, Oreos. I mean, Mondelez, I apologise, is an American that Kraft took over your great brand company.
You know, Cadbury, that along with Lever Brothers.
Now, Unilever was the founding force in late Victorian corporate social responsibility, as paternalistic as it was,
but a values driven company and joined by John Lewis and others later and now Mondelez,
whatever a computer generated corporate jargon and brand name and our dear old Oreos are now being sold, sold still in Russia.
Not essential, hardly. So, you know,
we've taken a very strong stand in particular with Mondelez and a frankly gone after them rather mercilessly after engaging with them privately.
But no, no effective end. And then there's the case of Shell, which, like along with BP,
led the initial parade out and I wouldn't give them too much credit because they
clearly anticipated there would be sanctions from the UK government and others,
but led the parade out in that last weekend of February last year and now Global Witness in the Guardian and be for Ukraine.
Our organisation for good reasons are going after Shell because they seem to be on the verge
of of being rewarded and accepting a billion plus payment from the Russian government.
It buys out assets, including the Sakhalin two project in the Russian Far East,
and the Ukrainian government calls that billion or so payout that has not yet been made to be their blood money and has
demanded that any such payout be transferred to expenditure in supporting a green reconstruction of a post-war Ukraine.
So there's different twists and turns here.
So I turn now to the third and final part of my remarks, and that's to ask what can we learn together from this?
Not well enough. Understood, in my view, phenomenon of Western business, exit from Russia in the broader implications.
So I think, first of all, that Russia's attack on Ukraine has given long overdue impetus to the whole business and conflict agenda,
which began to emerge in the mid to late 1990s with initiatives in the UK,
the use of the voluntary principles and security and human rights, which is the global standard for extractive companies,
oil and mining of how they should work with security forces in conflict zones and many other initiatives.
But we've had a whole emergence in the converging worlds of of business and human rights, business and conflict around human rights, due diligence.
And that is the notion that companies have a responsibility to do due diligence, to do research and analysis, undertake human rights,
risk assessments of projects they may consider beginning or projects that they're operating,
countries that they're operating in the first, such human rights due diligence, a human rights impact assessment.
Interestingly, and perhaps surprisingly to some, was commissioned by BP in early 2002 for its West Papua liquefied natural gas project there.
And then that became the model for really a whole cottage industry around human rights
impact assessments and then the UN Guiding Principles on business and human rights.
Some of you were aware of involved with, led by the late professor John Ruggie produced those UN guiding principles on business
and human rights with human rights due diligence as their real operational heartbeat.
So what we're seeing now is that the this invasion of Ukraine has really given impetus to human rights due diligence,
particularly in conflict settings. And a lot of good work has been done, including in the UN system,
the UN Development Program just in the last year of refreshing and updating and refining ways of going at human rights due diligence.
I as somebody who spent some years early in my career in the belly of the beast of corporate
America and has been in and out of corporate offices and in c-suites for decades,
I couldn't say that we need to meet these companies partly where they are.
They've been doing political and geopolitical risk analysis for half a century, since the 1970s, but still too few do human rights due diligence.
We need a fusion of that geopolitical human rights analysis and human rights due diligence.
Such a fusion may have made companies realise that Putin's seizure of parts of Donbas and indeed of Crimea was the beginning of the invasion,
that the invasion didn't start just on the 24th of February 2022.
I can tell you, though, that sleep is being lost and headaches are being experienced in the c-suites,
in corporate boardrooms in Japan and Australia and across the Atlantic and elsewhere around the world,
worrying about, you know, what a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
And that is on everyone's minds, at least in the corporate and investment world.
So I want to conclude here by suggesting, as I've been trying to over the last year, as somebody who looks.
To events that have crystallised certain challenges and opportunities that may also galvanise new ways of thinking and acting.
And at the risk of being naive,
I would like to think like to think that this foreign mostly western business exit is incomplete as it is from Russia can build a bridge to something.
I call, for what it's worth, a new notion of geopolitical corporate responsibility.
Now, that sounds fanciful, but if we just step back and think about this international rules based order, which is on sort of life support of rule,
of law, of reaching decisions through global institutions, through the U.N. and respecting those rules as our own.
Two governments, the U.S. and the U.K. certainly did not in 2003,
whatever else we felt about Saddam Hussein and his ghastly treatment of his own people.
But that invasion was a flagrant violation of the U.N. charter and gave some succour to later to Putin.
We have to be mindful of inconsistencies and hypocrisies, but there is a rules based order still,
and there have been no greater beneficiaries of it over the last three quarters of a century than these
great big multinational corporations who depend on that rules based order for trade and investment,
for and for rule of law within countries.
There's a good reason why the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals has goals 16 peace,
justice and strong institutions as underpinnings of sustainable and profitable, responsible business environments for companies and investors.
So I hope that a new geopolitical corporate responsibility would compel at least some companies,
some leading companies, to think about their reliance on this rules based order to find ways to support its tottering,
tattered remnants, to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals,
to support what I call the shared space that should link business and civil society,
the shared space of rule of law, accountable governance, civic freedoms, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly,
freedom of association and for business also to recognise its fundamental responsibilities working
through the international community and its battered institutions to address the inequality crisis,
the climate crisis. What we can't do is go back to business as usual with the international rules based order,
with all the shots called by the Permanent Five in the U.N. and Pax America.
It's got to be a rebalanced, refocused, south, north, east, west.
But there have got to be rules of the road.
And I just have to say that I've become more and more he was respectful, as we all need to be and I hope try to be of other views of,
you know, the dismissal of certain standards as just Western standards.
Well, the UN Declaration on Human Rights is a global standard,
forged as much or more by people from global south countries as it was by Eleanor Roosevelt,
whose statue is up here in Mansfield College outside the new port of Vera Institute of Human Rights.
It's global, the ILO, International Labour Organisation, core labour standards, you know, for no forced labour,
no child labour antidiscrimination, for God's sake, global standards, not Western global standards.
We need business to embrace these. And finally, I would just say that business shares a responsibility to work for peace.
Governments, though, in civil society, we share a responsibility to make business accountable.
It's not just on them. It's on us.
And I've thought long and hard about this over my work, over many years of trying to engage with these huge concentrations of power, corporate power.
And it's up to us, not them, just them, how they conduct themselves in the most vital matters of war and peace,
of inequality, of of the climate crisis. I hope that this conflict will reinforce the conviction that we all have the moral,
political and economic agency to work for peace and human rights, all including business.
And I think this conference will remind us. Thank you.