A/HRC/8/16 page 17 55. Importantly, companies themselves recognize the potential for complicity in human rights abuses, and company-sponsored codes include avoiding complicity.45 Certain collective initiatives established to prevent abuses in contexts where indirect rather than direct corporate abuse is more likely, such as the Kimberly Process and the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, also implicitly provide guidance on how to avoid complicity.46 56. Sometimes, the use of complicity standards in the non-legal context closely follows the applicable tests under international and national law. At other times, they may not require the same degree of knowledge and assistance as under law, such as those which provide censure for mere presence in a country where there is abuse or the receipt of benefits from a known abuser. These claims can lead to a variety of outcomes including shareholder disapproval, reputational damage and even divestment. 1. International standards, principles and other guidance (a) The United Nations Global Compact 57. In 1999 the then United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan introduced the Global Compact, addressing business leaders in the following terms: You can uphold human rights and decent labour and environmental standards directly, by your own conduct of your own business. Indeed, you can use these universal values as the cement binding together your global corporations, since they are values people all over the world will recognize as their own. You can make sure that in your own corporate practices you uphold and respect human rights; and that you are not yourselves complicit in human rights abuses.47 (Emphasis added) 58. Principle 2 of the Global Compact specifically refers to complicity: “business should make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses”. The explanatory statement to this principle indicates that corporate complicity in human rights abuse could occur in three main forms: direct, beneficial and silent:48 45 See for example the International Code of Ethics for Canadian Business which includes amongst its “Principles” that signatories agree to “not be complicit in human rights abuses”. The Code is available at: http://www.lib.uwo.ca/business/intlethi.html. 46 The Kimberley Process was established to help stem the flow of conflict diamonds (see http://www.kimberleyprocess.com/) while the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights promote corporate human rights risk assessments and training of security providers in the extractive sector (see http://www.voluntaryprinciples.org/). 47 Press Release, SG/SM/6881, 1 February 1999, available at: http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/1999/19990201.sgsm6881.html. 48 See commentary on Principle 2 from the Global Compact, available at: http://www.unglobalcompact.org/AboutTheGC/TheTenPrinciples/Principle2.html.