Then the next 200 letters came and the prison director came to see me. When the next pile of letters arrived, the director got in touch with his superior. The president was informed. Power believes Amnesty International has a valuable future role teaching multinational corporations to be more active in defending human rights. We live in an era of globalisation.
International companies are increasingly powerful and have a social impact.
Amesty very much sees the whole debate about globalisation as one that gives an opening for the human rights contribution. They have been pioneering conversations with big companies. For example they talked to the Shell oil company in the Nigerian delta area after the terrible human rights abuses that occurred there during the dictatorship. Shell Oil now have a very firm set of principles that governs the conduct of Shell operations. Only very recently, De Beers, the big South African diamond corporation, approached Amnesty to ask it to help them formulate guidelines and principles on how their work is carried on in this very difficult area of diamonds in West Africa.