Olympic sponsors 'should have been assessed on environmental and human rights records'

Olympic organisers have been criticised for not considering ethical, environmental and human rights records of major sponsors at this year's Games.

The London Assembly has passed a motion criticising the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) selection of Dow Chemical Company as a worldwide partner, the Independent has reported. The deal is said to be worth $100 million (£64 million) over ten years.

Dow is a 100 per cent shareholder of Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), whose Indian subsidiary was responsible for the world’s worst ever industrial disaster in Bhopal. The Assembly said that the Olympic Committee's decision to do business with the company has damaged the reputation of London 2012.
Dow has denied it has any responsibility for the Bhopal disaster or the contaminated land which is still an outstanding issue in the city. The company bought UCC in 2001, 17 years after the gas disaster claimed as many as 25,000 lives.

Darren Johnson, Green Party member, said: "Dow was not involved at the time and did not own the Union Carbide plant at the time. But it now owns the company wholly, including those subsidiaries involved in the water contamination today, and so it cannot absolve those liabilities because of a take-over a deal."

Labour’s Navin Shah, who proposed the motion, added: "The issues around Dow’s on-going court cases are complex but they are on-going and very real. The Olympics have become a big business, and money talks in the end. The IOC remains a faceless and shameless organisation, colluding with organisation involved in environmental and human rights abuses."

There are also concerns over other Olympic partners, such as McDonalds, which has recently been criticised for the obesity epidemic. . The world biggest McDonalds has been built in the London Olympic park.

A motion reprehending the decision of the IOC to select Dow as a Worldwide Partner was passed with a majority of 16 to seven. They added that organising committees should consider the environmental, social, ethical, and human rights records of companies when awarding high-profile partnership and sponsorship deals.

Posted by Joseph Hutton