Human rights concepts and applications

¶ … respect for human rights and human dignity is the "foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world"

However, in India, as well as in other parts of the world such as in South America, vulnerable communities have been exploited by one of the wealthiest and most recognised global corporations in the world, Coca-Cola. On one hand, Coca-Cola claims to adhere to the "highest ethical standards"

On the other hand, many of its activities around the world are completely inconsistent with that proposition, raising the question: Is it fair that ones right to consume the latest and cheapest product often mean that someone else's basic rights have been reduced or removed?

According to reports by The Global Exchange Organisation,

parts of India's district of agricultural land have dried up as a direct result of the Coca-Cola plant that drains water from local wells. While the giant corporation fills bottles for sparkling, exotic-sounding drinks that it calls Dasani and BonAqua, it does so at the tremendous expense of local farmers who must suffer the consequences of the resulting water shortages that interfere with crop irrigation and that make their farm lands infertile.

Community drinking water is depleted and major sanitation problems trigger diseases like gastroenteritis and eye infections among the local populations that depend on the same water supply. Compounding the problem is the fact that the Coca Cola Company has also been selling its industrial waste products to the local farmers as fertilizer. This fertilizer is unsafe by virtue of its high levels of toxic wastes such as lead and cadmium, both of which are known as destructive environmental pollutants

This is hardly the only ethical violation being committed by Coca-Cola. The company also purchases sugar cane from Central America. The same high-quality sugar that Coca-Cola procures at low cost to give its products their characteristic sweetness is known to be the product of child labour in El Salvador

. Other examples of ethical violations include incidents in connection with the efforts of union leaders in Colombia fighting for the rights of labourers at Coca-Cola's main Latin American bottler. Reportedly, Coca-Cola hired mercenaries who actually murdered those union leaders. Likewise, other union activists were fired for attending union meetings and some of their family members were kidnapped and tortured in 2005. In Turkey, fourteen Coca-Cola truck drivers and their families were tortured and beaten while protesting the layoff of 1,000 workers from a local Coca-Cola bottling plant. In Mexico in 2000, a senior bottling manager was sacked and sued for being gay.