Codes of conduct for transnational corporations: The case of the WHO/UNICEF code

International Organization

Volumn 40, Issue 4, 1986, Pages 815-840

  Sikkink, Kathryn ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84976179158     PISSN: 00208183     EISSN: 15315088     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020818300027387     Document Type: Article

References (66)

1. World Health Organization, International Code of the Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes (Geneva, 1981); “Joint Agreement, International Nestlé Boycott Committee and Nestlé,” 25 January 1984, signed by Carl Angst, executive vice president of Nestlé, S.A., and William L. Thompson, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church, representing the International Nestlé Boycott Committee.
2. For other aspects of the baby food controversy, see Wolfgang Fikentscher, “United Nations Codes of Conduct: New Paths in International Law,” American Journal of Comparative Law 30 (Autumn 1982), pp. 590–93, on legal implications. Prakash Sethi, The Righteous and the Powerful: Corporations, Religious Institutions and International Social Activism—The Case of the Infant Formula Controversy and the Nestlé Boycott (Marshfield, Mass.: Pitman, 1985), examines the issue in relation to the business literature. See also James E. Post, “Assessing the Nestlé Boycott: Corporate Accountability and Human Rights,” California Management Review 27 (Winter 1985), pp. 113–131.
3. In the late 1960s many countries began to assert increased control over the TNC activities. Nationalization is the most dramatic, but not necessarily the most characteristic, form of host-country control, which can also involve policies, legislation, and provisions on such basic issues as monitoring and screening investors, ownership, and divestment, technology transfer, taxation, disclosure, investment guarantees, and dispute settlement. One survey reveals that of 29 less developed countries, 22 adopted regulations on transnational corporations during the period 1967-80; seven had legislation relating the TNCs prior to 1967; and only one has no such regulation. See United Nations, Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC), “National Legislation and Regulations Relating to Transnational Corporations” (New York, 1981).
4. See Werner J. Feld, Multinational Corporations and U.N. Politics: The Quest for Codes of Conduct (New York: Pergamon, 1980), p. 18.
5. International Chamber of Commerce, “Guidelines for International Investment” (Paris, 29 November 1972); U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “Elements of Global Conduct for Possible Inclusion in Individual Company Statements” (Washington, D.C., January 1975).
6. “Guidelines for Advertising Practices in the Promotion of Pesticides Products in Developing Areas of the World,” October 1983, prepared by the Agricultural Chemicals Association Dialogue and accepted by the National Agricultural Association, Washington, D.C.
7. Robert Grosse, “Codes of Conduct for Multinational Enterprises,” Journal of World Trade Law 16 (September-October 1982), p. 147.
8. FAO, “Draft International Code on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides” (Rome, February 1984).
9. John Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism and the Postwar Economic Order,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982).
10. Cf. Robert O. Keohane, “The Demand for International Regimes,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982).
11. Adopted UN codes includes UNCTAd's Set of Multilaterally Agreed Equitable Principles and Rules for the Control of Restrictive Business Practices, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1980 (TD/RBP/CONF/10/Rev.l); the Tripartite Declaration of Principles Concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy, passed in November 1977 by the ILO Governing Body; the WHO/UNICEF Code for the Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes; and the FAO/ WHO Code of Ethics for International Trade in Food, adopted by the Codex Alimentarius Commission in 1979.
12. Kenneth L. Adelman, “Biting the Hand That Cures Them,” Regulation, July-August 1982, p. 16.
13. International Organization Monitoring Service, Bulletin 82–02 (11 January 1982), p. 6.
14. See, for example, D. Surjano et al., “Bacterial Contamination and Dilution of Milk in Infant Feeding Bottles,” Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, 1979.
15. James Post and Edward Baer, “Demarketing Infant Formula: Consumer Products in the Developing World,” Journal of Contemporary Business 7 (Autumn 1978), p. 22; Andy Chetley, The Baby Killer Scandal (London: War on Want, 1979), pp. 94–95.
16. S. J. Plank and M. Milanesi, “Infant Feeding and Infant Mortality in Rural Chile,” WHO Bulletin no. 48 (1973), p. 48; H. Kananneh, “The Relationship of Bottle Feeding to Malnutrition and Gastroenteritis in a Pre-Industrial Setting,” Environmental Child Health, December D. B. Jellife, “Commerciogenic Malnutrition,” Nutrition Review 30 (1972).
17. Resolution WHA27.43, Handbook of Resolutions and Decisions of the World Health Assembly and the Executive Board, 4th ed. (Geneva, 1981), 2:58.
18. From case materials prepared by Professor James E. Post of Boston University, “Nestlé Boycott (A),” Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, 1981, p. 9.
19. See INFACT, Monitoring Report: Infant Foods Industry, July-August 1984: “Thirteen Nation Field Data and Analysis of the International Babyfood Industry Marketing Activity with Reference to Industry Obligations under the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes.” I have also used my field interviews, conducted in Central America December 1981-January 1982.
20. Interview with Edward Baer, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, New York, 15 April 1982.
21. Post, “Assessing the Nestlé Boycott,” p. 121.
22. “Lessons from the Anti-Infant Formula Campaign,” Business International, 5 February 1982, p. 8.
23. See Inis L. Claude, Jr., “Collective Legitimation as a Political Function of the United Nations,” in Leland M. Goodrich and David A. Kay, eds., International Organizations: Politics, Process (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973), pp. 209–221.
24. Ernst Haas has defined consensual knowledge as “a body of beliefs about cause-effect and end-means relationships among variables (activities, aspirations, values, demands) that is widely accepted by the relevant actors irrespective of the absolute or final truth of these beliefs.” Quoted in Robert Rothstein, “Consensual Knowledge and International Collaboration: Some Lessons from the Commodity Negotiations,” International Organization 38 (Autumn 1984).
25. A study by the Sāo Paulo School of Medicine in 1979, for example, monitoring babies of low-income families, found that 32% of bottle-fed babies suffered from malnutrition compared to 9% of breast-fed babies; 23% of the bottle-fed babies and none of the breast-fed babies had to be hospitalized. Research in Chile has shown that Chilean babies who were bottle-fed during the first three months of life suffered three times the mortality rate of those who were exclusively breast-fed. Reported in Washington Post, 21 April 1981.
26. D. B. Jellife and E. F. P. Jellife, Human Milk in the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). See also Ambulatory Pediatrics Association, “Statement by the Board of Directors on the WHO Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes,” Pediatrics 68 (September 1981).
27. “The political implications of the consensual knowledge (especially interpretations of its effect on national interests) and the specific bargaining configuration must interact in a fashion that permits or facilitates diffusion and subsequently agreement on new policies.” Rothstein, “Consensual Knowledge,” p. 755.
28. For a summary of scientific literature distributed by activists, see Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), Breast Is Best (New York, n.p., n.d.), and Infant Formula Action Coalition, “Policy vs. Practice: The Reality of Formula Promotion” (Minneapolis, May 1979). The latter juxtaposes quotations from scientific studies and health professionals with baby food company statements.
29. Plank and Milanesi, “Infant Feeding,” pp. 203–210.
30. Other NGO publications and flyers that served to highlight, publicize, and circulate authoritative information on the issue include ICCR, “What the International Health Agencies Recommend about Baby Formula Promotion: Excerpts and Recommendations” (n.d.); “What Health Personnel Say about Infant Formula Promotion in the Third World” (n.d.); and “Excerpts from Documents: WHO/UNICEF Meeting on Infant and Young Child Feeding, Geneva, Switzerland, October 9–12, 1979,” ICCR Brief, January 1980.
31. Post, “Assessing the Nestlé Boycott,” p. 121, and Robert Ball, “Nestlé Revs up Its U.S.
32. Post, “Assessing the Nestlé Boycott,” p. 121.
33. Post, “Assessing the Nestlé Boycott,” p. 124.
34. “Nestlé Boycott Being Suspended” New York Times, 27 January 1984.
35. Thierry Lemaresquier, “Beyond Infant Feeding: The Case for Another Relationship between NGOs and the U.N. System,” Development Dialogue (1980), pp. 120–125.
36. Rafael D. Pagan, Jr., president, Nestié Coordination Center for Nutrition, Inc., “Issue Management: No Set Path,” before the Issues Management Association (Roosevelt Hotel, New York City, 7 November 1983).
37. Interview with Douglas Johnson, executive director of the Infant Formula Action Coalition, New York, 5 December 1984.
38. Business International, 17 October 1980.
39. Some in the business community feel that codes of conduct will continue to proliferate and that corporations must get involved in their development. John Kline, for example, argues that “a carefully structured participatory role [in code exercises] could turn challenge into opportunity, benefiting both individual corporations and the broader objective of an open international economic system.” Kline, “Entrapment or Opportunity: Structuring a Corporate Response to International Codes of Conduct,” Columbia Journal of World Business 15 (Summer 1980), p. 6.
40. U.S. Department of State, telegram from U.S. Mission in Geneva (no. 02652), March 1981, p. 1.
41. U.S. Department of State, telegram from U.S. Mission in Geneva (no. 02652), March 1981.
42. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Memorandum, “WHO Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes—Decision” (October 1980), p. 3.
43. Washington Post, 18 March 1981.
44. DHSS, Memorandum, p. 3.
45. U.S. Department of State, telegram from U.S. Mission in Geneva (no. 12065), September 1980.
46. Post, “Assessing the Nestlé Boycott,” p. 120.
47. Lemaresquier, “Beyond Infant Feeding,” p. 120.
48. Interview with Kathleen Cravero, UNICEF, New York, 10 January 1985.
49. As a result of the negotiations between INBC and Nestlé, UNICEF and WHO were requested to clarify a portion of the code which states that infant formula companies could donate supplies to hospitals for infants who “have to be fed on breastmilk substitutes.” WHO argued that the code was written and adopted by governments, and thus only the governments could further interpret it. Eventually, however, WHO developed a plan, presented by Dr. David Tejada, assistant director general of the organization, whereby WHO and UNICEF agreed to give technical advice to governments who would in turn develop the requested definitions based on that advice. Both Nestlé and the INBC agree to cooperate fully in the implementation of the Tejada Plan. See Minutes of the Joint Press Conference between Nestlé and INBC to announce the termination of the Nestlé Boycott, 4 October 1984 (Mayflower Hotel, Washington, D.C.).
50. On the role of labor and trade unions in the adoption and implementation of codes at the regional and international level, see Robinson, Multinationals and Political Control.
51. See Minutes of Press Conference, 4 October 1984.
52. INFACT, Monitoring Report: Infant Foods Industry, July-August 1984.
53. Annelies Allain, “Toward a Better Code,” IBFAN/IOCU (mimeo, April 1984).
54. Reported in “International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, Update on Implementation,” UNICEF Ideas Forum no. 19 (1984).
55. Harry Schwartz, “Perspective on the Third World,” Pharmaceutical Executive, March 1982, pp. 13–16.
56. Robert Cox, “The Crisis of World Order and the Problem of International Organization in the 1980s,” International Journal 35 (Spring 1980), discusses the role of international organization in the institutionalization of hegemony—the universalization of norms proper to a structure of world power—and also the possibility that international institutions may become vehicles for the articulation of a coherent counterhegemonic set of values.
57. Public Affairs Council, Program for Conference, “Activist Groups at the International Level” (Hilton Hotel, New York City, 21–22 April 1982).
58. New York Times, 19 December 1984.
59. See UNCTC, “Transnational Corporations in the Pharmaceutical Industry in Developing Countries” (New York, 1983), pp. 27–28.
60. Virginia Beardshaw, Prescription for Change: Health Action International's Guide to Rational Health Projects (The Hague: International Organization of Consumers Unions, 1983), p. 9.
61. UNCTC, “Transnational Corporations in the Pharmaceutical Industry,” p. 1.
62. SCRIP no. 509 (28 July 1980), p. 10.
63. Health Now, 17 May 1984.
64. Heritage Foundation, “The World Health Organization: A Policy Assessment,” draft, Washington, D. C., November 1984.
65. New York Times, 16 December 1984.
66. Adelman, “Biting the Hand,” p. 16.