Two non-governmental organisations have received about RM1.3 million in grants from ExxonMobil for their community outreach projects to help women and girls. The Women's Centre for Change (WCC) received RM972,000 and the Women's Aid Organisation (WAO), RM324,000.

It is therefore interesting to learn more about ExxonMobil and its human rights record.

Even by oil company standards, ExxonMobil's human rights record is appalling. Amnesty International has documented many cases around the world where oil exploration and extraction is fueling armed conflict and contributing to human rights abuses, such as through the use of security forces to protect oil company staff and assets; violent repression of protest; and forcible displacement of large populations of local people. Examples include Sudan, Nigeria and Colombia.

ExxonMobil is also being sued for complicity in human rights violations in Aceh, Indonesia, including allowing its facilities to be used for torture and interrogation. Human rights investigators and journalists have reported that the Indonesian military has used ExxonMobil facilities to torture its victims and used company equipment to dig mass graves for burial of murder victims.

In Chad and Cameroon, citizen opposition to the environmental and social consequences of ExxonMobil's Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline has been met with brutal government suppression.

In Colombia, an entire village was forcibly relocated last year to make way for the expansion of South America's largest open pit coal mine, majority owned by ExxonMobil's wholly owned subsidiary Intercor. ExxonMobil later sold Intercor to its minority owners.

And when Exxon merged with Mobil in 1999, it became the first United States employer ever to rescind a non-discrimination policy covering sexual orientation.

Since 1997, ExxonMobil has spent US$47 million in lobbying government officials. In the 2000 election cycle, ExxonMobil and its employees donated $1,375,250 - 89 percent of which went to Republican candidates - helping to ensure that fellow Texan and oil executive George W Bush got elected to the White House.

In 2001, its investment has paid off. ExxonMobil lobbied hard against the Kyoto Protocol, the only international treaty to address global warming. In March 2001, the Bush administration announced that the US would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

ExxonMobil have spent a staggering US$7.9 billion last year on exploration and development, with much of it in pristine ecosystems such as the Arctic Refuge and the sensitive habitat of the endangered Western Pacific Grey Whale off the coast of Sakhalin Island, Russia.

Some of West Africa's last untouched rainforests are threatened by ExxonMobil's Chad-Cameroon pipeline, which is partially financed by US taxpayer dollars via the World Bank, while the company's proposed McKenzie pipeline may jeopardise important forests in Alaska and Canada.

ExxonMobil is also a major funder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) which has received US$2,005,000 from the oil company since 1998. CEI is a Washington-based conservative think-tank and is currently at the centre of the global warming misinformation campaign.

CEI has tackled tough and contentious scientific issues such as global warming, carbon dioxide and fuel-economy standards, most recently expanding into the politics of food. The organisation mixes free-market ideas with the anti-regulation and environmental movements, but unlike most institutes that are content just to think and speak, the CEI does not shy away from forcing action through the courts or the legislative process.

CEI, among many other statements denying the seriousness of global warming, has argued that climate change would create a "milder, greener, more prosperous world" and that "Kyoto was a power grab based on deception and fear". In addition to leading the campaign to convince the public that global warming is uncertain, CEI has weighed in on pesticide risk and endocrine disrupting chemicals - both of which pose no threat to human health, in CEI's view - and has supported regulatory "takings" measures.

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Human rights work, just like any other work involves cost and spending, and have turned out to be an expensive affair. Non-governmental organisations in Malaysia might have come across many times the question of ethics and the big picture of what a social cause actually should be or is. The long-standing argument of questioning the ends rather than the means is hereby challenged.

What is the actual price that is attached to the so-called 'means' that is necessary to meet a noble end? What is the cost for a social cause actually? Do we practice and assume upon ourselves the very pertinent judgment values and principle stand that we often demand from others?

Or are we immune from this set of questions and therefore a new set is much needed? If so, what should it be? Or is it just wrong for such questions to be asked?

The writer is a human rights activist linked to various organisations.