Dialogue towards a Corporate Social Responsibility Convention in Rio+20
With the upcoming 2012 Earth Summit marking the 20th anniversary of the Rio 1992 Conference and 30 years since the Brundtland Commission, the dialogue on the need for a convention on social responsibility has been restarted. The call for a stronger contribution from the private sector in sustainable development efforts has come from many sectors: governments, businesses and civil society organisations.
It has been mentioned repeatedly through the Rio+20 zero draft submissions. Therefore, we need to build up the momentum and use the platform provided by the Rio+20 summit to encourage governments to adopt a binding commitment, to develop a national framework on corporate social responsibility that ensures wide compliance of sustainable development principles throughout the sector.
In order to mobilise support for this initiative, a global multi-stakeholder process engaging civil society organisations, corporations and corporate social responsibility initiatives is being convened by Stakeholder Forum and Vitae Civilis. This dialogue joins forces with the recently launched “Corporate Sustainability Reporting Coalition’, convened by AVIVA with the support oif 40 like minded organisations. We welcome this initiative as a serious contribution which we can build up a dialogue around.
Our objective is to enable a global dialogue among existing corporate social responsibility initiatives, corporations and civil society organisations from North and South in order to build consensus around the need for a Covnention, and on the content and format that such a Conventiona should have. This draft will be used as a starting point once the UN process for having a convention is approved with a resolution at Rio+20.
More information can be found at http://www.csradialogue2012.org
**NGOs and other Major groups’ organisations that are NOT yet accredited to the United Nations and wish to participate in the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development Conference (Rio+20) will be offered a one time opportunity to become accredited to Rio+20. Click here to start the accreditation for new groups.The deadline for new accreditation is 20 February 2012. Once your registration is approved, your organization can preregister representatives until the general deadline of 20 May 2012.
