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Chapter 8. Corporate Social Responsibility and Peace-Building Process in the Bakassi Peninsula
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213 Chapter 8 Corporate Social Responsibility and Peace-Building Process in the Bakassi Peninsula Corporate Social Responsibility When I try to discuss corporate social responsibility – CSR, in post war zones, people tend to ask me why I should talk of corporate social responsibility as if war is business. But I always tell them that war is business (Fongot Kinni, 2004), since the end profit of war is essentially to promote the interest of the conquering party. In my lectures of Doing Business in Africa as Visiting lecturer at Aalto University Business School of Helsinki, Finland, I discussed with my students on “War Business” as “The Irony Of The Baby-Sitter-Healer”, I went on to make the assumption that: “This is a topic that most business analysts might not like to treat easily because of the grey area it occupies. Because just like the drugs business, it is kind of underground, or treated more like a parallel domain in the business world. For instance, War, like the Anglo-American Iraqi war, is great arms business turned into the politics of fighting “terrorism”; sickness is a great business in health drugs and medicaments, or anti-retroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS, is painted to look humanitarian; alleviating hunger and poverty has become a business agency for most NGOs both local and foreign… It is no hidden secret that Jonas Savimbi and Charles Taylor or Johnson, Fodefo Sanko, made use of what have become known as “War Diamonds” and “Blood Diamonds” to buy arms for their guerrilla warfare in Angola, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Just like the Contra drug dollars of Noriega of Panama for the war Nicaragua, and the USA hostages in Iran release, in which President Ronald Reagan was alleged to be complicated, war-arms-deal is considered a dirty business, but which is very lucrative. Many business persons have amassed lots of wealth from the supply and sales of arms in the various wars in Africa and the world over. The American Federation of Scientists (2004) confirms that the world trade in arms and “their associated consumables and systems” stand at 150 billion US dollars per year. It also explains that although every industrialized nation in the world has its own arms industry for domestic 214 consumption by its military forces, “some countries also have a substantial trade in weapons for legal civilian use.” This is where I insisted on the notion of corporate social responsibility – CSR by those who promote war directly or indirectly by selling arms; and those who go to war; or those who exploit war torn zones for business and corporate interest. I was of the opinion that after every war, under the principle of Corporate Social Responsibility – CSR, those manufacturers and salesmen of weapons, under the principle of vicariate responsibility, should also be held responsible and brought to book to also pay for the damages caused by the various types of weapons used, like: land mines which remain dangerous to the environment and endangers the lives of members of the community even many years after the war; all kinds of bombs – nuclear, neutron, phosphorus cluster bombs, including drones, and weapons of mass destruction, biological weapons and weapons of biological terrorism, which do not only damage the environment, and all living organisms including innocent humans; but also provoke unchecked mobility where forcefully displaced people become refugees. The bottom line is that those who produce arms already have as objective the destruction of an enemy or an innocent person or innocent people: especially, women, children and the aged. The reason I insist on this War-CSR is based on the cultural African philosophy of the art of waging war. Actually, in classical African method of waging war, just like if one was provoked to go into a fight with another person, the war had to be prepared and planned ahead of time. Nobody was taken by surprise. The enemies had to agree to go to war. The one who was proposing war had to send emissaries to inform the opponent, so that he decide whether he wanted war or peace. Usually, among the Chamba-Tadkon and the Tikar of Cameroon, it took certain forms of announcement: sometimes a spear and a baton was sent to the one with whom the contender wanted to go to war. If he selected the spear then he called for war. If he chose baton, then he opted for peace and peace talks. Sometimes it was a white and a black feather...