About Corporate Power
The Corporate Power project is part of the Economic Justice, Corporate Power and Alternatives Programme. TNI’s Corporate Power project seeks to develop analysis and proposals on how to dismantle corporate power. It plans to bring about a People's Treaty on the operations of TNCS that will include a call for an International body that can impose binding legal obligations on TNCs and end corporate impunity for ecological, economic and social crimes.
A focus on corporate power has characterised the work of TNI in partnership with the Enlazando Alternativas Europe-Latin America bi-regional network over the past several years. This stage of work culminated in the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) Madrid Session in 2010. The in-depth documentation of 45 cases presented to the PPT on strategic sectors of the economy - extractives (oil, gas and minerals); agri-food chain; water and electricity; work, financial services and banks – established the existence of systemic violations of human rights, people’s rights and rights of nature characterized as economic and ecological crimes. These range from acute environmental destruction, to toxic pollution, displacement and dispossession of communities, destruction of livelihoods, denial of access to basic goods and services, violation of labour rights and the assassination of workers, trade unionists, and human rights defenders. The judgement of the PPT Madrid Session concluded with a call to develop binding obligations on the operations of TNCs and the need to establish an international body to judge and sanction TNCs. The Permanent People's Tribunal and joint work have drawn attention to key elements that underly the growth in corporate power and their evasion of responsibility for their crimes:
- the architecture of impunity – the policies and mechanisms of de-regulation imposed by Free Trade Agreements, Bilateral Investment Treaties and the multilateral international regime of Trade and Investment policy represented in the WTO, IMF and WB which have enshrined corporate rights above responsibilities;
- the Lex Mercatoria (international commercial law), which has enshrined the principle of freedom for financial markets and corporate trade, preventing governments from acting in the public interest;
- the consistent marginalising and eroding of efforts in the UN to regulate TNCs – resulting in a weak, voluntary and ineffective Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) approach that leaves people without a recourse to justice for corporate abuses;
- and the existence of the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) – a Tribunal under the auspices of the World Bank which only allows TNCs to bring governments to arbitration for any attempts to control their activities that are perceived to threaten their profits.
Consultations with social movements and civil society networks have taken this work forward in activities which took place in 2011 - Brussels (Nov), Durban (Dec), Montevideo (Dec), and in 2012 - Porto Alegre (Jan), Marseilles (March), Johannesburg (May). From these consultations, a global campaign was developed and launched together with 100 movements and networks at the Rio+20 conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 2012 that is aimed at dismantling corporate power and ending corporate impunity.
Recent publications from Corporate Power
Impunity Inc.Forty years after Salvador Allende denounced corporate power at the United Nations General Assembly (December 1972), millions of people all over the world are involved in struggles against the human rights violations and the social and environmental injustice generated by transnational corporations. |
A Landmark Victory for Justice: Biowatch’s Battle with the South African State and MonsantoPublished by Biowatch South Africa, this is a book about access to information, the right to know, and action in the public’s interest – a must-read for anyone campaigning for environmental or social justice. |
State of Power 2013As the world's most powerful corporate leaders and richest individuals gather at the exclusive World Economic Forum in Davos, TNI offers a visual insight into who is dominating the planet at a time of systemic economic and ecological crisis. |
Transnational Capital vs People's ResistanceHow does transnational capital function? Where does it operate? What globalised logic does it follow? What is the magnitude of its abuses and its social, economic and environmental irresponsibility? And what challenge do we see emerge for us, the people?
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