poverty. Legislation and codes favourable to the
rights of foreign investors were incorporated into
bilateral
free
trade
agreements,
providing
additional legal protection for corporations by
allowing them to sue governments that rescind
permits for operations. However, as corporations
were
confronted
with
rural
and
indigenous
community upheavals, multinational organizations
began to formulate their own regulation strategies
referred to as corporate social responsibility (CSR).
In Johannesburg, CSR was added to the multistakeholder negotiations (MSN), which have come
to realize that close relations with the local
communities (e.g. women, youth and children,
indigenous peoples, local authorities, workers and
trade
unions,
scientific
and
technological
communities, and farmers) are crucial for their
operations. But the concepts of CSR and MSN
reinforce
the
notion
that
corporation
and
community interests are compatible (that it is a
question of dollars and cents), and that each
member of a community supposedly has a common
interest, represented by the venture (mining), in
fair negotiations. Some authors argue that there is
no community rights in the periphery to reject
14