Zimbabwe the \"Caux Round Table

Zimbabwe

The "Caux Round Table Principles for Business," which was adopted by a series of U.S., European and Japanese leaders in 1994, clearly put on papers several of the businesses' and economic agents' responsibilities in third countries where they might be operating. The recommendations included the fact that the members had "a responsibility in those communities to...respect human rights and democratic institutions, and promote them wherever practicable."

There are a couple of important things to be noticed in this statement. First of all, the responsibility is to respect the human rights and democratic institutions already implemented in those communities rather than respect the human rights and democratic institutions that are globally recognized and promoted or the ones in the country of origin. Zimbabwe, for example, has an extremely poor human rights record and almost no democratic institutions, so it shouldn't prove too hard to respect those

Second of all, the recommendations are to promote them wherever practicable, not too promote universally recognized human rights values whenever possible. Well, certainly, in Zimbabwe, they are not practicable, because President Mugabe is a dictator and it would be impracticable to promote them. What we are trying to show from the very beginning is that the business recommendations are generally made so flexible that they certainly are no impediment to business entities, including those from the apparel industry, to conduct workforce exploitation and human rights violation, under the umbrella of such positive, socially responsible statements.

The human rights problem in Zimbabwe is not necessarily related to labour issue or lack of workforce protection, as we may expect to find in such industries as the apparel industry. The human rights issue in Zimbabwe is much more dramatic because it is targeted towards political opponents and anybody who might make statements against President's Mugabe authority. Individuals are denied their most fundamental rights, such as the right to have a lawyer present during questioning. The right to decent working conditions is an essential right, but, if it were to be classified, it is less comparable with the right to freedom of speech, for example.

In my opinion, the impact that Zimbabwe has on human rights relating to the apparel industries is given by the environment without rules (or rather with only one rule, that given by President Mugabe) and a framework where fundamental human rights are not respected. In such a framework, it is highly unlikely that entities will keep watch of labour conditions in the apparel industry, for example, or on child employment in similar industries. The watch is directed towards issues perceived as being more important, such as providing political pluralism and freedom of speech.