Advantages and Disadvantages of Voluntary Agreements

In your view, what are the advantages and disadvantages of voluntary agreements such as the Kimberly Process and the EITI? Voluntary agreements at industry or country level are becoming very popular in the last years as a way to tackle severe issues that are affecting countries all around the Globe. Although the main scope is really deserving, I think that such organization have a limited room to make a real impact in their grounds. Such organizations are pretty visible in terms of politics: local politicians can use the argument of successfully joining certificating institutions to sustain their own political role. This may represent a strong incentive for eligible countries to actively join such organizations and make all the required steps. Such incentive may be reinforced by international pressure: in any case when the sovra‐national organizations favor the joining of such institutions, eligible countries may be spurred to take action, at least in the early phases of the process. As a second advantage, I’d mention the fact that such organizations can leverage their independency (from both politics and countries) to quickly establish a strong credibility and a strong consensus amongst their audiences (a problem that, for example, EITI was clearly facing). To maintain and further increase such credibility is another point of debate. Although the aforementioned advantages, there are several major pitfalls that impair the effectiveness of such organizations. First, they completely miss ruling enforcement systems. As independent and external institutions, they cannot go beyond the ejection from membership of countries that do not follow the set of agreed standards. There is no possibility for EITI of Kimberly Process to force a country to change its own laws or rules. They have only a moral suasion power, i.e. treating to eject countries not willing to agree with the defined standard, or at maximum refuse the membership. Unless such