Corporate Accountability

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Increasing attention and debate are being focused on corporations, their growing power, and their impacts around the world. Human rights abuses involving corporations continue to impact communities and workers throughout the world, whether indigenous communities devastated by mining operations, agricultural workers crippled by pesticides or inadequate wages, infants harmed by the false marketing of baby formula, or female garment workers subjected to sexual harassment and unsafe working conditions. In response, many NGOs and grassroots groups, as well as some governments, have called for greater corporate accountability for human rights, while many companies are beginning to talk about corporate social responsibility.

• Involving support for international standards, this advocacy has included the creation of educational materials and events, facilitation of broad-based participation in UN consultations, documentation, and lobbying.

• Additionally, the Working Group seeks to strengthen the voice of communities and grassroots groups challenging abuses of human rights by corporations, by documenting and highlighting particular cases in solidarity actions, publications and public forums.

• Finally, the Working Group seeks to build the capacity of its participants, by connecting groups to one another, providing resources for advocacy, and creating space for the exchange of information through its listserv.

Particular projects and positions are shaped by the collective discussion and efforts of the groups and individuals involved in the Corporate Accountability Working Group. Moving forward, the Working Group welcomes your input and your participation in these ongoing activities, as well as in the identification of new areas of advocacy and collective work. To become involved: Join our associated Corporate Accountability Listserv, by sending an email to ESCR-corp-accountability-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. We encourage you to use this listserv to share your work, requests for solidarity, and other information related to corporate accountability, as well as your ideas and input to the Working Group.

• Become active in one of the projects below and participate in its development. We are particularly eager to circulate case studies of human rights violations involving corporations, as a basis for solidarity actions, for connecting groups working on similar issues, and for analyzing gaps in the protection of human rights as part of ongoing advocacy for international corporate accountability. Please send case studies or reports to the listserv at ESCR-corp-accountability@yahoogroups.com or to nlusiani@escr-net.org.  

• Propose new areas of collective work through the listserv.

View cases on the ESCR-Net Caselaw Database relating to Corporate Accountability