'UK firms using legal muscle to facilitate human rights and climate abuses – report', 11 October 2022

UK companies operating overseas are afforded far greater legal protections than the citizens of the countries they invest in, leading to corporations getting away with human rights and climate change abuses, a report has found.

The Transform Trade charity says the majority of UK bilateral investment treaties (BITs) contain no mention of climate change, the environment or human rights, meaning companies are not held accountable for violations.

By contrast, it found the UK is playing a key role in the rise of cases where corporations sue states, in private courts, for lost profits under controversial investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms specified in BITs.

ISDS cases have been used to challenged government responses to economic crises or taking climate policy actions, with awards running to billions of pounds.

Corporations based in the UK have brought 66 cases under ISDS mechanism in the past 10 years, the third highest of any country based on all known cases, and the number has increased in recent years, the report says...

... A separate report published by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre last month found that 129 attacks on human rights defenders between 2015 and July 2022 were connected to UK business activities, one in five of which resulted in people being killed...