The United Nations must develop international standards that hold big business accountable for its impact on human rights, Amnesty International says in its annual report published on Wednesday.
There is evidence in many parts of the world that “people are being tipped into poverty and trapped there by corrupt governments and greedy businesses”, Irene Khan, Amnesty’s secretary general, says in her foreword to the report.
According to Ms Khan, a growing demand for mining, urban development and tourism projects “is putting pressure on land, across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, with entire communities evicted from their homes without compensation or alternative shelter.
She says that weak, impoverished, and often profoundly corrupt states “have created a power vacuum into which corporations and the economic actors are moving”.
“In some of the most resource-rich countries with the poorest populations, big business has used its unbridled power to gain concessions from governments that deprive local people of the benefits of the resources, destroy their livelihoods, displace them from their homes and expose them to environmental degradation.”
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