Following years of strategic campaigning for a Business, Human Rights and Environment Act (BHREA), the UK Government initiated a formal review into responsible business conduct. To ensure that any new legislation is grounded directly in the insights of frontline rightsholders from the Global South, the African Coalition for Corporate Accountability (ACCA) partnered with the Corporate Justice Coalition (CJC) and other regional networks. Together, they co-hosted a series of regional consultations gathering experts from over 50 civil society organisations and trade unions globally to shape a model accountability law.
Report Title: Shifting the balance of power: four priorities to protect communities, workers and the environment from transnational corporate harm.
Publication Date: 14 May 2026.
Collaborating Organisations: Corporate Justice Coalition (CJC), African Coalition for Corporate Accountability (ACCA), Asia Indigenous Peoples Network on Extractive Industries and Energy (AIPNEE), Poder, and Partners in Change.
ACCA’s Core Contribution: Redressing Power Imbalances
ACCA's contribution to the report focused heavily on ensuring that future legislation moves beyond a mere corporate "procedural compliance checklist." The joint consultations stressed that an effective law must directly target the power imbalances that currently allow transnational corporations to abuse human rights and local environments with impunity. By bringing distinct African perspectives on land-grabbing, extraction, and community dependency to the table, ACCA helped shape recommendations across four key priorities:
- Recognising Harm: Expanding the legal definitions of corporate harm to capture the lived experiences, environmental degradation, and lost livelihoods of affected communities.
- Addressing Information Imbalances: Mandating corporate transparency to ensure rightsholders can access critical project details, contracts, and risk assessments.
- Enabling Access to Remedy: Crafting accessible judicial pathways so that victims of corporate abuse in the Global South can hold UK parent companies legally liable.
- Ensuring Preventative Action: Forcing companies to undertake continuous, decision-shaping due diligence before operations begin.
Conclusion and Rightsholder Centricity
The report concludes with a powerful directive pushed forward by ACCA and its partners: policymakers, civil society, and corporate stakeholders must engage with rightsholders directly. Because local communities are the ones experiencing transnational corporate harm, they possess the deepest insight into how to effectively address, prevent, and remedy it.
For more information please conatct:
Tel: +27 (0) 12 420 6398
basimanyane.k@up.ac.za
