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Bousquet, Marc. Sweatshop. 2009. Accessed 31 Mar. 2011.
<http://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/DGreen/researchhypertext/litreview.html> |
In general the protection of human rights is not a considered a corporate responsibility. The federal government and many state governments fail to impose sufficient human rights laws on corporations. Corporations are very powerful units that severely impact the wellbeing of communities and individuals wherever they operate. They have had detrimental effects on human rights protection in developing countries and developed countries as well. According to David Kinley a professor of law at Monash University since 1999 there has been an increased interest worldwide to make corporations responsible for protecting human rights (7). Many developing countries abuse their own people through police and military brutality, forced child labor, violation of freedom of association, speech, and religion, and infringement on property rights. Studies from Kinley show that in 2001 39 pharmaceutical companies in South Africa fought to prevent a new law from being passes which would have lowered the price of prescription drugs in a country where the poverty rate is high (9). That is extremely unethical for corporations to be able to control the price of prescription drugs so that they are ridiculously high especially in an area with a soaring poverty rate. Those high prices force people to spend extra money on the medications they need and not have much money left for food or other necessary items. Kinley also mentions that Nike is notorious for running sweatshops in less developed countries (10). It is also immoral to deeply exploit a mass amount of people just to maximize profits. In developed countries corporations mistreat their own people by infringing on environmental rights, violation of privacy rights, and unethical use of people’s personal information such as medical records. Kinley states that many corporations in America and Canada have ignored patent protection laws to heighten their proceeds (9). That causes many people to not trust corporations with their ideas and lowers people’s enthusiasm which could cause the economy to decline. Richard Eskow from the Huffington Post insists that many insurance companies misuse medical information to decide who they should insure and what price they pay for it (par 2). This means that the people that really need health insurance could be forced to pay higher rates than everybody else or be denied coverage. Eskow also reasons that if a regular person committed the crimes that a great deal of corporations have committed then that person would be sentenced to prison (par 13). This means that numerous corporations are getting away with heinous crimes that should have a severe punishment. Corporations need to work hard to protect human rights or else the world will turn into a place where corporations dominate everything while having no responsibilities.
Works Cited
Bousquet, Marc. Sweatshop. 2009. Accessed 31 Mar. 2011. <http://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/DGreen/researchhypertext/litreview.html>
Eskow, Richard. MadisonWorld: A Future Where Corporations Have Human Rights… and Humans Don’t. 23 March 2011. 31 March 2011 <http://www.ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/eskow20110323>.
Kinley, David. Multinational corporations and human rights. February 2002. 31 March 2011 <http://www.law.monash.edu.au/castancentre/projects/arc_kinley.pdf>.
I enjoyed this post. It's interesting to see how far corporations will go to secure profits. I thought your example about the pharmaceutical companies in South Africa illustrated your point well. I also agree that corporations need to work hard to protect human rights.
ReplyDelete-Elephant
Dear Corporation Corruption,
ReplyDeleteI really appreciated this blog post because I definitley agree with it. The fact that corporations have so much control in our daily lives but little responsibility for our rights is scary. I believe that because of the enormous amount of power corporations have the ability to possess, they should take legal responsiblity for the rights of humans. I liked when you stated, "The federal government and many state governments fail to impose sufficient human rights laws on corporations. Corporations are very powerful units that severely impact the wellbeing of communities and individuals wherever they operate." Corporations truly do have a major say in communities across the world. They have this authority because of the amount of money they have. People do not have a chance trying to take a stand for themselves when they are up against multi-million dollar corporations. Because of this they must settle for unfair treatment. I also liked when you said, "This means that the people that really need health insurance could be forced to pay higher rates than everybody else or be denied coverage." This statement hits home because it demonstrates that people have to pay or go without even when they cannot afford to pay. There is no protection or negotiation. The people that have low income seem to get taken for granted. It is sad to think that many people are caught in this situation. Thanks so much for writing! I will come back if you continue writing about topics that are very real in many parts of the world.
Britney Crawley