Leading companies are failing millions of children by violating voluntary corporate responsibility codes, which by themselves are proving wholly inadequate as a means of improving children’s lives, a report by Save the Children and The Corporate Responsibility (CORE) Coalition has found.
Why Corporate Responsibility is Failing Children reviews three voluntary codes for companies: the Breastmilk Code, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI). It finds all three codes are attracting only a small sub-section of companies in each sector, and that there remains strong evidence linking corporate promotions to reduced breast feeding, almost no relevant companies are fully transparent about payments to repressive regimes, and key aspects of the ETI, such as freedom of association, are routinely ignored.
Save the Children and CORE are calling for companies that fail to meet the aims of codes they sign up to to be penalised, and for governments to promote laws that underpin codes of conduct at national level and support international measures such as the UN human rights norms for business.
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