AFRI 2009, Volume X - The Global Compact. When the UN regulation of companies’ activities is being considered again

The United Nations have been attempting to regulate globalisation effects since the end of the 20th century. Companies, especially international ones, create hopes and fears in the areas of human rights, labour, environment, anti-corruption, while enjoying universal consensus and development. The Global Compact, a strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles, is a non mandatory approach, which contrasts with the United Nations choices of the formers decades. Whereas it’s a fact that codes of conduct and other voluntary initiatives have been adopted by firms, the Global Compact may appear as the United Nations response to this trend, but also as an incentive to interfere in the internal affairs of States, and specifically in those of developing countries. Yet, in its legal form, the Global Compact is nothing more than a moral and ethics convention