The UN Forum on Business and Human Rights needs an overhaul. As the world’s largest annual gathering on business and human rights, it is an important venue for exchange of ideas and good practice — but one that has not provided sufficient space for rights holder expertise and input.

Analytical frameworks offer a more detailed lens through which to understand and talk about power imbalances in the BHR context. The different approaches highlighted in this post map out the various ways in which corporations exercise power in the BHR space, and help to identify less visible forms of power used in company-community engagement, and consider the epistemic dimensions of power and its material impact.

There is an urgent need to understand and promote processes for mitigating and remedying corporate human rights harms in ways that lead to rights-respecting outcomes for local communities. This article explores how companies may use remedial mechanisms that on their face appear adequate to fairly address negative impacts on local communities, but nonetheless fail to remedy those harms.

Human rights work is a praxis of possibility when it is based in learning from and collaborating with people directly impacted by systemic injustice and oppression. This isn’t happening enough. This post examines this issue through the lens of epistemology, drawing on Santos’ book The End of the Cognitive Empire.