What's Happening with the Corporate Capture Project?At the ESCR-Net Peoples’ Forum on Human Rights and Business, during October 2015, in Nairobi, Members of ESCR-Net’s Corporate Accountability Working Group (CAWG) strongly reiterated the need for Members to collectively increase efforts across CAWG to address the means by which an economic elite undermines the realization of human rights and the environment by exerting undue influence over domestic and international decision-makers and public institutions, a phenomenon known as 'corporate 'capture'.
Members are beginning to participate in research by completing the new Corporate Capture Survey, developed by the Corporate Capture Project Advisory Group, which includes Above Ground (Canada), Citizen News Service (India), Defend Job (Philippines), Habi Center for Environmental Rights (Egypt), PODER (Mexico) and Sierra Leone Network on the Right to Food. The Project Advisory Group, with the leadership of Citizen News Service, has also developed a tool for aggregating online media regarding cases of corporate capture and the CSO strategies used to address the various characteristics of this root cause of corporate-related human rights abuses.
Initial research, beginning in 2015, has also supported various events—including the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights and the Global Media Forum—and emerging advocacy. In May 2016, ESCR-Net led the Treaty Alliance in adopting a statement urging the forthcoming UN Treaty to address corporate human rights abuses to remain free of corporate influence, and include provisions that would address corporate capture at the national level.
