Vicky Bowman served as British Ambassador to Myanmar from 2002 to 2006, and was a Yangon-based diplomat for seven years in total. From 2011 to 2013, she was employed in the private sector by Rio Tinto. Since October last year, she has been Director of the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business, formed jointly by the Institute for Human Rights and Business and the Danish Institute for Human Rights. A core aim is to promote awareness of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (unanimously endorsed by the Human Rights Council in June 2011). Externally, MCRB works particularly closely with the ILO and OECD. Internally, it partners both with government and civil society. On a daily basis, it links with companies of all kinds, and seeks broadly to support the UN Global Compact local network formed following Ban Ki-moon’s visit to Myanmar in April-May 2012.

We talked first about the different needs of different companies. Major western corporations tend to be up to speed with the responsible business agenda, and often seek advice on who talk to talk to, how to work with government, and how to partner with civil society. Asian companies, under little scrutiny at home, are less aware of or concerned by international standards. However, problems at Letpadaung copper mine have made them realize that Myanmar communities now have more freedom, and are mustering the courage to stand up and demand an end to bad practice. Leading local businesses are beginning to embrace greater transparency, and a forthcoming MCRB scorecard on what they publish regarding company structure, corruption, health and safety, human rights and land is focusing minds. To date, small companies remain broadly unaffected by the responsible business agenda, unless there is a chance they could become part of a top western corporation’s supply chain.

One issue that came through very clearly in our discussion is the long shadow cast by Letpadaung. On the positive side, Myanmar Wanbao is seeking to implement the terms of its revised agreement with the Myanmar government. One small indicator of this is its website, which hosts a range of important information, including a draft economic and social impact assessment running to 300 pages, plus 2500 pages of annexes. Increasingly, this kind of transparency will become standard practice once the government issues long-awaited ESIA rules requiring consultation and publication. On the negative side, there is a danger that Letpadaung will foster the emergence of a compensation culture in Myanmar, which has latterly become a dominant issue in debate. MCRB is bringing in comparative experience, for instance of companies adopting more genuine community engagement in Peru, to show that obtaining and retaining social licence to operate is rarely fixed just by spending money.

Connected to this are two ongoing MCRB sector-wide impact assessments of oil and gas and tourism (with agriculture and ICT to follow). These will recommend that to avoid negative impacts and poor relationships companies must go beyond government liaison and establish direct contact with communities. They will also advise the government, still often reluctant to lose control, to encourage this. In many respects, the problem Myanmar Wanbao faced in Letpadaung was that it failed to develop meaningful community ties enabling managers to understand and respond to local grievances. Now it is seeking to correct that, for instance by guaranteeing jobs to people who have lost land, though this too could be problematic because many affected families never owned land in the first place. A general commitment to source unskilled labour from the local community might be a better way forward.

We closed by discussing the general change registered in Myanmar’s business climate during the reform years. One highlight is ILO engagement not only in working to eliminate forced labour, but also in facilitating the implementation of new labour laws. Its Freedom of Association Programme, launched in June 2012, has already helped as many as 940 trade unions to form across the country. But there are also many ongoing challenges for business, particularly in the two critical areas of electricity and land, and in the overarching need to create more jobs for a population desperately seeking a significant boost in life chances.