The accountability gap in Africa’s extractive sector is not a result of the absence of binding legal frameworks or investment regulations. The African human rights system has advanced global jurisprudence by introducing and applying innovative human rights and investment norms. Despite the robust human rights regime, including legally binding regional norms for redressing human rights abuses, local communities continue to suffer the consequences of extractive MNCs’ egregious human rights abuses without access to remedies. Corporate impunity is often fueled by governments’ reluctance or inability to hold these corporations accountable and by local communities’ limited access to effective remedies. While extractive MNCs in Africa are legally obligated to respect human rights, the continent needs a robust enforcement mechanism and the political will to hold defaulting enterprises accountable. Hence, I propose strategies to implement the region’s rich human rights and investment initiatives and to narrow the accountability gap in the extractive sector.

It seems futile to look for order in the tangle of norms that abound in the global extractive sector, even more so to look for the teleological principle that would give it meaning. In this tangle, normative regimes interact with each other—in a largely contingent manner—as elements of an ecosystem. We argue that inasmuch as order emerges in the global extractive normative ecosystem, it is a function of the success of norm entrepreneurs such as Export and Development Canada (EDC), Canada’s export credit agency, a financial institution adhering to the Equator Principles. Norms entrepreneurs like EDC perform various normative bricolages claiming to deliver different goods such as free, prior and informed consent (FPIC). We analyse how EDC tinkers with different normative instruments, including the International Finance Corporation’s Standard 7 regarding Indigenous Peoples, to deliver ‘FPIC compliance’ in jurisdictions that are deemed ‘deficient’. We argue that the political ontologies promoted by EDC’s notion of FPIC are better understood within the logic of leverage that underlies EDC’s Environmental and Social Risk Management Policy. These ontologies directly contradict notions of FPIC as expressions of Indigenous self-determination. In our view, offering such normative solutions as a palliative for ‘weak’ jurisdictions—a kind of ‘do-it-yourself (DIY) FPIC regime’ implemented by extractive companies—is thus deeply problematic. We conclude that the appraisal of such normative solutions as put forward by these norm entrepreneurs should look beyond the vocabulary these bricolages mobilise to also consider the political grammar that they induce in territories subject to extraction.

The private sector is the main engine of economic growth, with corporations contributing to the development of countries where they operate.1 However, concerns persist regarding the negative impacts of corporate activities, ranging from unethical and irresponsible business conduct to environmental deterioration, corruption, indigenous and local communities’ land rights violations, and human rights abuses.2

With the Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence, the European Union strives to address the negative externalities of companies that arise in the global economy. The new Directive follows the example of national lawmakers by requiring large companies operating in their own jurisdiction to manage adverse impacts on human rights and the environment. These due diligence laws affect companies beyond European borders by cascading due diligence standards down transnational ownership ties and value chains. They are shifting gears in the complex engine of the global economy and have considerable impacts on stakeholders in third countries. These extraterritorial implications raise the question of what limits international law places on relevant unilateral legislation. This article assesses the Directive against the law of jurisdiction and international comity arguing that unilateral due diligence laws are an appropriate way to address transnational sustainability challenges, provided lawmakers take adequate precautions.

European corporations have recently discovered vast quantities of oil and gas in Namibia, presenting significant opportunities and risks. Business and human rights (BHR) principles should be applied to the projects, but this paper is motivated by a concern that extant BHR norms are partial and inadequate, particularly in light of global economic and environmental crises. Starting from a critique of liberal human rights, this paper develops a human rights realisation-oriented vision of BHR designed to capture the root causes of harm and to enforce developmental objectives upon corporations. We study the African philosophical concept of ‘Ubuntu’, the 1970s UN Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations, and a 2023 report on business and the right to development to develop specific principles underlying this more comprehensive version of BHR. In conclusion we argue that a more confrontational and egalitarian vision of BHR is needed to address today’s grand challenges.

Online platforms have adopted business models enabling the proliferation of hate speech. In some extreme cases, platforms are being investigated for employing algorithms that amplify criminal hate speech such as incitement to genocide. Legislators have developed binding legal frameworks clarifying the human rights due diligence and liability regimes of these platforms to identify and prevent hate speech. Some of the key legal instruments at the European Union level include the Digital Services Act, the proposed Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive and the Artificial Intelligence Act. However, these legal frameworks fail to clarify the remedial responsibilities of online platforms to redress people harmed by criminal hate speech caused or contributed to by the platforms. This article addresses this legal vacuum by proposing a comprehensive remedial responsibilities framework for online platforms which caused or contributed to criminal hate speech based on the general corporate human rights responsibilities framework.

This article examines how operational-level grievance mechanisms (OGMs) implemented by transnational mining companies in Africa entrench corporate control over victims’ access to remedy. Although OGMs are central to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, their deployment in weak governance contexts often transforms them from early-warning tools into the sole avenue for redress. Through a comparative analysis of four different mines that reveal converging mining and business and human rights dynamics unique to Africa, this article considers how OGMs reproduce power asymmetries through opaque procedures, limited consultation, information imbalances, and unpredictable remedies. These dynamics undermine the UNGPs’ effectiveness criteria and reveal structural gaps within Pillar Three’s design. The article argues for alternatives, such as independent grievance mechanisms and additional guidance on implementing the UNGPs that guarantee legal representation, prohibit restrictive waivers, and introduce sector-specific recommendations. Without such changes, OGMs risk legitimising corporate abuses rather than remedying harm.

This article argues that the global Business and Human Rights movement demonstrates a push towards a human-rights type of sustainable corporation, reconciling economic development and human rights. It explains the necessity for and significance of a definition of a sustainable corporation at the intersection of traditional international human rights and sustainable development instruments. It argues, inter alia, that an internationally recognised definition of a sustainable corporation can settle fundamental questions and create a minimal framework for meaningful discourse on corporate accountability for human rights, climate change and the environment. It identifies difficulties of defining a sustainable corporation such as the integration problem. It suggests ‘direct human rights obligation’ as a minimally sufficient normative criterion for the definitional correctness of a sustainable corporation. The suggested definition of sustainable corporation requires taking a normative position which makes the term ‘essentially contested’ resulting in discursive and behavioural norm contestation in the search for definitional determinacy and consensus within the divide between international and domestic law.

Operational-level grievance mechanisms are often viewed as a means to empower rightsholders to access remedy for human rights abuses. This article presents qualitative research findings on Kakuzi’s ‘Independent Human Rights Mechanism’, a mechanism specifically designed to provide remedy for human rights abuses. Kakuzi’s grievance mechanism takes place in the context of historical land injustices, whereby thousands of squatters are subject to practices of enclosure—territorial, legal and epistemic—that legitimate Kakuzi’s authority over the land.

The article takes an actor-oriented approach, following grievances across their full trajectory—from community members’ injurious experience, to those grievances heard by the mechanism, to representation of community grievances in corporate disclosure—while foregrounding the agency communities exercise in relation to the mechanism. The mechanism delimits which grievances are admissible and remediable. Communities dissent from this delimitation through various strategies. Corporate disclosure of grievances then distorts local realities.

War is a lucrative business for the military industry, particularly in contexts of mass and structural violence, extensive violations of international law and genocide. For economically advanced states, the profits generated by military businesses are often seen as beneficial under the dynamics of the military-industrial complex. Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which has caused untold suffering that has ‘scarred the consciousness of humanity’, aptly illustrates this dynamic.

In such a context, states and corporations arguably have a duty under international law not to contribute to or benefit from the war economy of the state committing such violations. In practice, however, adhering to these obligations conflicts with the lucrative economic and geopolitical opportunities that this war economy provides. This essay reflects on the argumentative techniques used by states and corporations to justify continued military support for Israel, despite its clear contradiction with their international legal obligations.

Business and human rights class litigation in South Africa has increased over the last ten years. Through the analysis of Various Parties on behalf of Minors v Anglo American South Africa Limited (2020/32777) (2023) ZAGPJHC 1474 (Kabwe) and silicosis class action litigation, the author examines how the South African judiciary has contributed to the advancement of business and human rights objectives. The piece traverses the purposive statutory interpretation approach of the court and incremental development of class action certifications to contribute to this outcome. It is argued that the rejection of the opt-out class participation mechanism for a wholly foreign class in Kabwe represents a missed opportunity to further transnational corporate accountability in certification applications by using key tenets of Ubuntu and decolonization. Such an interpretation would have offered a compelling pathway for localizing the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in the African context.

The defence industry plays a critical role in maintaining international peace and security, yet its activities inherently have human rights implications. This article examines the industry’s responsibility to respect human rights in conformity with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. It explores challenges, practices, and opportunities of human rights due diligence within the arms sector—including the end-use monitoring component. It seeks to inform policymakers, industry, scholars and activists working towards a rights-respecting arms trade regime. The article will explore human rights due diligence’s foundations in international human rights law and corporate social responsibility frameworks, as well as emerging shifts and standards in the legal landscape at the national, regional, and international levels. Drawing on the American Bar Association Center for Human Rights evidence-based research, this piece will also explore the industry’s response to its due diligence obligations and how these narratives cannot shield the industry from legal, financial and reputational risks.

There is increased public attention directed to the topic of weapons trade and this is a positive development because enhanced scrutiny holds a promise of bringing more accountability to the field that has long been obscure. This article reviews the possibility of criminal prosecutions of corporate officials for supplying weapons to Gaza, Yemen and Ukraine at the International Criminal Court (ICC) or a similar forum. The Nuremberg Trials planted seeds for such an endeavour by holding several industrialists criminally liable. Yet, modern international criminal law has so far largely stayed away from defining the scope of individual criminal responsibility for corporate officials. The case studies in this paper reveal that the moment is not ripe for commencing actual investigations at the ICC. Nonetheless, a future consensus is slowly building through (often failed) attempts to use legal or policy avenues to define the standards of conduct in the weapons trade.

Large European arms companies increasingly own and control subsidiaries in other parts of the world. These subsidiaries operate hundreds of production sites used to manufacture and export weapons for the benefit of the parent company. Yet, they are bound by the legal framework in host countries. An important case study of this phenomenon is South Africa, which is now the site for numerous subsidiaries of large European arms manufacturers, including Rheinmetall and Hensoldt. Between 2018 and 2021, a Rheinmetall subsidiary in South Africa continued to export weapons to Saudi Arabia despite a German prohibition. This article uses South Africa as a case study to examine the potential consequences of the practice of offshoring in the context of weaknesses in South Africa’s arms export control framework and provides recommendations on how to improve scrutiny and reporting in South Africa’s system to better guard against this type of conduct.

This article examines recent measures undertaken by major commercial banks to mitigate and address human rights risks associated with their financial dealings in the arms industry. By reviewing the corporate policies of 20 leading banks that provide financing to top arms manufacturing and exporting companies, the article provides insights into three significant aspects of banks’ efforts: the development of defence sector policies, the implementation of risk assessments for adverse human rights impacts, and the application of exclusion clauses. These measures highlight the increasing recognition by banks of the need to address the ethical, social and human rights implications of financing arms deals, contributing to the broader regulatory and normative framework governing the arms industry.