New Delhi: Controversies over land acquisition and labour unrest involving big businesses have prompted the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to come up with a "code of ethics" for corporates.
A draft report in this respect has been submitted to the NHRC by New Delhi-based Institute of Corporate Sustainability Management (ICSM) Trust and has been perused by the Commission.
NHRC had commissioned a study - 'Developing Code of Ethics for Indian Industries' - with the objective of bringing into effect a similar code of ethics for corporates by drawing from international norms.
For the study, data was collected from ten sectors - steel, power, mines, cement, paper, FMCG, sugar, banking and MFI, textile and pharma.
"We had a sitting on the draft report. It talks about what corporate bodies have to do in ensuring human rights, their obligations of corporates to maintain human rights and their attitude towards employees besides other issues," NHRC Chairperson Justice K G Balakrishnan told PTI.
He said NHRC was looking at a scenario where the state will watch the performance of the corporate bodies and ensure that human rights values are observed by these bodies. "There should be accessibility for common man to redress their grievances. So the state should provide this accessibility. So if there is a human rights violation, a single citizen may not be in a position to fight against the corporates. So should give the facility and accessibility by court or other fora," he said.
Balakrishnan noted that the issues with corporates was not an India-specific problem.
Comments
0 comment