The critical public calls it a necessary counter point to the World Economic Forum. Independent sustainability rating agencies have categorized it as a top reputational risk factor. Journalists like to quote it as an example of innovative campaigning. Since its beginning, the Public Eye events and actions in Davos and New York as well as the trendsetting online campaign have shaped the discourse on the corporate responsibility to respect human rights and the environment.

By publicizing concrete cases of human rights violations and environmental destruction, the Public Eye has helped amplify the voices of affected communities and has supported the campaigns of the nominating organizations. The Public Eye effectively shone the spotlight on civil society’s demand for more transparent, socially sustainable and environmentally just economic policies and business practices.

Over 500’000 votes in the online voting, world-wide media presence, and political pressure resulting from massive public attention have resulted in some positive changes. Several companies who were either nominated for or awarded the mother of all naming and shaming awards – alongside governments and financial institutions – have reacted in favor of human rights and the environment:

  • The British bank Barclays which had won the Jury Award in 2012 for food speculation, announced in February 2013 that it would stop the practice because it posed a risk to the bank’s reputation.
  • The Switzerland-based energy utility Repower was nominated in 2013 for its plans to build a coal-fired power station in Italy. Repower was later forced to bury the project due to the lack of public support. The resonance in the media had given a boost to the campaign opposing the project and had helped win a popular initiative called “Yes to clean energy without coal” in the canton of Grisons, Switzerland, with a very thin majority.
  • South African mining company AngloGold Ashanti which won the 2011 Jury Award for violating human rights in Ghana also gave in to the pressure from the public and investors. The Norwegian Government who had invested pension funds in AngloGold Ashanti, ordered an investigation into the allegations which eventually compelled the company to resume negotiations with the affected communities and compensate them for the harm done.
  • Following media coverage on Roche’s unethical clinical trials in China, which had won the Swiss pharma giant the Jury as well as the People’s Award in 2010, the internationally operating bank Triodos decided to remove Roche from all its investments. The bank concluded that Roche’s approach to clinical trials was unacceptable and that the pharmaceutical company no longer met the bank’s human rights minimum standards.

In other cases, other actors were responsible for putting a stop to irresponsible corporate conduct. Swiss Pharma giant Novartis received the Jury Award in 2007 for using a patent lawsuit in an attempt to limit the access to affordable generic drugs in India. In April 2013 after seven years of litigation, the High Court in India decided not to grant Novartis a patent on its anti-cancer drug Glivec – an important success for the campaign of the nominating organizations and the affected people that put access to health care before economic corporate interests.

To reach the overarching goals of social and ecological justice and legally binding measures for greater corporate accountability, the host organizations of the Public Eye are actively engaged in the Swiss Coalition for Corporate Justice.