Binding rules, not voluntary promises
For over a decade, movements and civil society organizations have been working to advance a legally binding instrument to end the impunity of transnational corporations. Our position remains clear: only binding rules—not voluntary commitments or soft guidelines—can guarantee justice. At the same time, we have engaged in the UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP) process to expose how corporate actors, particularly from the fossil and extractive sectors, have captured climate negotiations, turning COP into a marketplace for false solutions instead of a forum for real transformation.
From the boardroom to the negotiating table, corporate capture is the common denominator undermining both the IGWG and climate COPs processes.
Corporate capture and the economy of genocide
The consequences of corporate impunity are not abstract. It is structural—rooted in the very architecture of the global capitalist economy—and must therefore be confronted as a systemic problem. Across regions, corporations profit from human suffering, extracting wealth from war, repression, and environmental devastation.
As UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese documents in her 2025 report From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide (A/HRC/59/23): “Far too many corporate entities have profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide,” and the report “exposes the integration of the economies of settler-colonial occupation and genocide,” calling for accountability of corporate entities and their executives.
The impunity enjoyed by these corporate actors and economic elites is not unique to Palestine–it reflects a broader pattern of corporate complicity in atrocity crimes: from the arms and surveillance industries that enable repression to the fossil-fuel and mining giants whose extraction drives displacement, militarization, and climate collapse.
Corporate complicity in Gaza exposes the intersection between ecocide and genocide. Companies like Chevron, Eni, Dana Petroleum, and Glencore profit directly from gas fields illegally licensed in Palestinian waters and from infrastructure such as the Arish-Askalan pipeline, which exports gas to Egypt and the EU. They also provide gas for fueling the Israeli genocidal regime. Even as bombs fall, these corporations sign new contracts, expand production, and earn billions, transforming ecological destruction and mass killing into lucrative contracts. This impunity persists because there are no binding global rules to stop corporate interference in setting regulations to hold them accountable — and there are no universal mechanisms to sanction or exclude those complicit in atrocities. Hence, at the global level, fossil-fuel lobbyists attend COPs in record numbers, their Public Relationships (PR) firms manage host-country communications, and their trade associations—such as the International Chamber of Commerce—seek to weaken the Binding Treaty text.
As highlighted by the Kick Big Polluters Out campaign and the Center for International Environmental Law— a call endorsed by over 225 organizations worldwide— the COP30 President Designate has placed the private sector center stage, urging “all business leaders to join the world in Belém” and framing climate action as “the defining business opportunity of our time”. This frame reduces the climate crisis to a market agenda, ignoring the risks of greenwashing, conflicts of interest, and corporate interference that have long undermined meaningful action.
Our Collective Demands
- Strengthen the Draft Treaty on Transnational Corporations and Human Rights
States must ensure that the treaty sets a gold standard for accountability, particularly by reinforcing Articles 6, 8, and 9 to establish clear obligations, liability across jurisdictions, and effective remedies for affected communities. The influence of lobby groups such as the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the International Organisation of Employers (IOE), and the United States Council for International Business (USCIB) must be resisted. Global South states must step up and lead in shaping a treaty that protects people, our nature and the planet from neo-colonial corporate power.This call also aligns with the Advisory Opinion on The Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which formally recognized the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a standalone human right. Embedding this standard in the treaty would mark a decisive step toward closing the global gap in corporate accountability.
- Embed Sanctions and Accountability in Climate and Human Rights Frameworks
Both the treaty and COP decisions and legal frameworks must include measures to sanction, divest, restrict trade, and implement legal consequences against corporations that aid and abet genocide, war crimes, and other human rights atrocities and violations. Where States are implicated in such grave crimes such as genocide, they too must be sanctioned and banned from policy or decision-making spaces such as the treaty negotiations and COP. Governments should follow the examples of Colombia’s coal export ban and Israel and Spain’s energy embargo, and heed people-led initiatives such as the Global Energy Embargo Campaign for Palestine (GEEP). If even genocide does not trigger accountability and other consequences, what will? - End Corporate Capture of Decision-Making Spaces
The treaty negotiations space and COP30 must mark a turning point:
- Commit to a corporate-free space — no corporate sponsorships or promotion of corporations, nor influence on decision making due to conflict of interest.
- Commit to no ties with economic elites — those with close ties to corporate actors, fossil fuels, firms representing business such as Edelman in COP30 or legal experts at the treaty negotiations connected to business, must have no role in leadership or in providing advice.
- Commit to setting rules to stop corporate capture: States and UN bodies must adopt binding conflict-of-interest policies that protect policy-making processes from corporate influence, ensuring that all decision making spaces are protected against industries with a decades-long record of undermining human rights and climate action.
- Commit to protecting people, nature and land from commodification — our nature and planet must not be auctioned off as business opportunities.
- Commit to sanctioning corporate violators: Corporations and corporate elite firms suspected of directly or indirectly contributing to human rights violations, environmental destruction, or genocide must be banned in COP, treaty negotiations, or related policy forums internationally, regionally, and nationally.
Our Call to Movements
We call on social movements, trade unions, Indigenous Peoples, climate justice groups, and civil society organizations worldwide to unite in demanding that states prioritize human rights over corporate profit, dismantle impunity, and build binding systems of accountability — from the frontlines of the climate crisis to the frontlines of genocide. Another world is possible, but only if we end the stranglehold of corporate power and organize for justice, dignity, and the protection of our planet.
Signatories
- International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net)
- Egyptian Foundation for Environmental Rights (EFER)
- Project on Organizing, Development, Education, and Research (PODER)
- Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID)
- Comité Ambiental por la Defensa de la Vida
- Above Ground, a project of MakeWay
- Campaña Que Paguen Los Contaminadores América Latina
