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Issue No. 362 (2025/1)
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COVER:
Companies behaving badly
Ten
years since launching negotiations on a business and human rights treaty:
Selected reflections on the way forward
By Kinda Mohamadieh
The activities of businesses can have adverse effects
on individuals, communities and the environment. And with so many companies
operating across borders, the potential harms they can inflict, and
the challenges of holding them to account, have only grown. Kinda
Mohamadieh looks at how ongoing negotiations to craft an international
treaty to regulate business conduct could help safeguard human rights
from corporate encroachment.
The
elephant in the room: Ending corporate capture of the LBI negotiations
By Marta Ribera Carbó,
Martha Sedeida Devia Grisales, Shohel Chandra Hajang and Mona Sabella
Unless the LBI negotiating process is freed of influence
by business interests, it risks perpetuating the very corporate impunity
it seeks to address.
Grounding
the new legally binding instrument on transnational corporations on
the right to a healthy environment
By Francesca Mingrone
and Ana Maria Suarez-Franco
The main existing frameworks to regulate corporate conduct
– at the international, regional and national levels – currently fail
to meaningfully incorporate protection of the environment. Francesca
Mingrone and Ana Maria Suarez-Franco explain how including
the right to a healthy environment and broader environmental considerations
in the new legally binding instrument on transnational corporations
is essential to ensure effective protection of people’s rights and the
planet.
Curbing
corporate abuse and exploitation in Latin America
By Gabriela Quijano
Having often fallen victim to business wrongdoings, Latin
America badly needs effective regulation of corporate activity to protect
human rights and the environment. Efforts towards this end have thus
far fallen short, but some building blocks for a robust corporate accountability
regime are already in place in the region.
The
ISDS imbroglio
By Lean Ka-Min
While accountability for their misdeeds may currently
be in short supply, there is no lack of rights and benefits enjoyed
by corporations operating abroad. For example, companies can sue their
host countries for lost profits in secretive tribunals established under
the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism – a system where
the state is put on the back foot and the public interest takes a backseat.
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ECOLOGY
Making
Erhai Lake bloom again
A
story of China’s ecological transformation
By Tings Chak
The restoration of the once heavily polluted Erhai
Lake in China’s Yunnan province is the fruit of a guiding vision that
sees protection of the environment as essential to, not at odds with,
economic prosperity.
ECONOMICS
The
gig economy’s false promise
By Jennifer D.
Daniel
Touted as a path to empowerment, Africa’s gig economy
is a digital twist on old patterns of labour exploitation – but workers
are fighting back.
WORLD
AFFAIRS
International
law at a crossroads: Can Gaza spark a global reckoning?
By Ramzy Baroud
The Gaza conflict has laid bare the toothlessness of
international law, but it also presents an opportunity to forge a
more equitable global order.
The
end of aid
By Laura Robson
The Trump administration’s targeted shutdown of USAID
would wipe out billions of dollars in development funding – it would
also shutter an agency which did not always have the interests of
its supposed beneficiaries at heart.
HUMAN
RIGHTS
Only
political will can end world hunger
Food
isn’t scarce, but many people can’t access it
By Jennifer Clapp
Hunger persists because we allow political and economic
injustice to endure, laments Jennifer Clapp.
The
forgotten victims: Orphans of femicide in Colombia
By Anna Abraham, Tony
Kirby and Sergio Alejandro Melgarejo García
In the face of the femicide crisis in Colombia, a second crisis
persists: hundreds of children are left orphaned each year and without
support from the state.
WOMEN
Hashtags
alone will not safeguard women’s lives and rights
By Tegan Zimmerman
and Adebola Esther Osegboun
The #BringBackOurGirls campaign raised questions around
the efficacy of using social media to promote gender equity.
CULTURE
Remembering
is not enough
By Frederico Freitas
The Oscar-winning film I’m Still Here shines
welcome light on the dark days of the military dictatorship in Brazil,
but much remains to be done before this terrible chapter in the country’s
history can truly be closed.
ACTIONS
& ALTERNATIVES
India’s
free library movement counters caste discrimination and authoritarianism
By Emily Drabinski
A network of activists in India is setting up libraries
as spaces of equality and empowerment.
Third
World Resurgence Page
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