The struggles for corporate accountability in the UN: A Global South perspective

This chapter investigates the civil society experience of struggling for the adoption of a binding instrument for holding transnational corporations accountable for human rights violations. Since the historical adoption of the 2014 UN Resolution 26/9, that initiated the negotiations of a treaty on business and human rights, every year, civil society groups attend and participate in the negotiation sessions. The chapter engages in participatory observation research in two of these sessions. Describing them and exploring the power asymmetries that characterise global civil society, it questions the representations of international institutions and how human rights are created in this context. It relies on the insistence of the third world approach to international law (TWAIL) that issues of distribution and power imbalances affect the way international law is produced and understood. Observations indicate that these sessions offer more than opportunities for activism and contestation. For civil society, they are also spaces for knowledge production and learning, for acquiring and applying expertise, an integral part of how people learn to be human rights experts, sharing experiences and striving to influence the setting of international standards.