Business and Human Rights
How multinational corporations affect human rights and the emerging framework to hold them accountable.
Corporations and Rights Abuses
International human rights law was designed to regulate states, not corporations. But in the modern global economy, multinational corporations wield enormous power. Some have revenues exceeding the GDP of entire countries. Their operations affect millions of workers, communities, and environments, often in countries where government regulation is weak or corrupt.
The roster of corporate human rights abuses is long: Shell's complicity in environmental devastation and violence in Nigeria's Niger Delta, the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh in 2013 killing over 1,100 garment workers, child labor in cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo supplying materials for smartphones and electric vehicles, and technology companies enabling surveillance by authoritarian governments. In each case, the question is the same: who is responsible, and how can victims obtain justice?