Insisting human rights be at the heart of business is not for the faint-hearted. The last year has seen moments of advance and satisfaction, such as Europe’s approval of mandatory corporate due diligence for human rights and the environment (CSDDD), alongside moments of fear and peril, such as the US election results, the disappointment of COP29, and the rising number of attacks on human rights and environmental defenders worldwide.

Around the world, our polarised societies are generating immense shearing forces in the evolution of markets. Some are cleaving to ever more radical versions of narrow nationalisms, a faith in the ‘animal spirits’ released by blanket deregulation and inequality, and convenient myopia on our ecological crisis. Our worldwide movement for human rights in business meanwhile seeks smart business regulation and incentives to address unsustainable inequality; the Wild West of AI’s release on our societies; and international cooperation to deliver urgent environmental regeneration.

A contest of visions

This contest of visions makes our movement more relevant than ever in 2025. We must be ready to win crucial arguments everywhere. Where we fail, we will see a recidivist retreat to the combustible mix of ‘let the market rip’ and a winner-takes-all formula, delivering abuse, inequality and worsening conflict. The private sector’s role in appalling crimes in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and Myanmar is a warning. Where we prevail, we will help deliver greater shared prosperity, climate justice and a fast and fair transition, corporate duty of care to workers and communities, combined with greater protections for civic freedoms and human rights and environmental defenders.

While there are many areas of proper tension in our broad movement, we will need a united voice on these fundamental principles if we are to influence events. Together, trade unions, human rights and Indigenous activists, environmentalists, feminists, frontline communities and rightsholders themselves, alongside accountable governments, responsible investors and corporate voices – which were heard on the CSDDD and the Inflation Reduction Act – can push for sea change in these critical areas.

Where democracy and rights are undermined, authoritarians have a powerful playbook to silence their critics in civil society and business through legal and physical attack. We must learn from our allies in India, the Philippines and so many countries that have to confront this playbook daily. The voice of responsible business too often fades to a whisper: the lack of a concerted business voice for respect for election results and human rights in the run-up to the US elections, and a similar silence in South Korea, illustrates the challenge.

Defending our gains will be critical

In this new context, our global movement will need to rebalance towards the defence of our many, if partial, advances over the last decade. We need to ensure we hold onto the gains that have been made as they come under attack from ideologues and vested interests. Law-makers need to hear the importance of embedding in business law the protection of rights in operations and supply chains and a level playing field for responsible business.

For inspiration, we need look no further than December 2024 when South Korean trade unionists, and human rights activists helped organise the peaceful street protests that defeated the coup attempt. The martial law decree labelled protesters and striking workers as ‘anti-state forces’, and banned political activities, protests, and workplace strikes and rallies while authorising arrests and searches without warrants. Their power-grab was defeated by a people determined to hold onto their democratic rights.

Our movement will have to be able to combine effective defence with a clear vision for the future of human rights in business – our next steps forward. Here, we already have many approaches emerging worldwide:

• Due diligence delivery: The growing worldwide movement to legislate for corporate human rights and environmental due diligence reflects a universal value expressed in the adoption, by consensus, of the UN Guiding Principles. Responsible business needs harmonisation and legal certainty, small and medium enterprises need support, and the rights of workers and communities need protection while providing access to shared prosperity. High risk sectors like the fast-moving frontiers of tech and AI can be no exception – companies must identify and mitigate human rights risks before releasing new products on the market, or risk civil liability.
• Shared prosperity for a just transition: If we fail to deliver a just transition to low-carbon economies, we can expect resistance and conflict delivering delay and loss of public trust. There are growing moves by governments, along with responsible investors and companies, to build shared prosperity, due diligence and fair negotiations upstream in the design of investments in renewable energy and transition mineral mining. Indigenous Peoples’ and workers’ leadership is proving crucial to emerging alternative models for shared prosperity in renewable energy and mining. Spain’s Just Transition Strategy, and recent legal reforms in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Sierra Leone give frontline communities and workers a greater say in the design of these developments.
• Cross-country learning on smart regulation: Faced with many collective action problems, responsive governments are sending clear market signals to insist companies play their part in solutions. From advances like the Brazilian AI Law to legally-binding agreements like the Pakistan Accord, there is an opportunity for law-makers to learn from legislative innovations and adapt them to each nation’s legitimate interests.
• Advancing public procurement incentives: Governments constitute a massive market for business: 14% of GDP, or €2 trillion in Europe, and similar for the USA. Governments can use their spending power to send powerful market signals about the business conduct which aligns with their purported values – such as outlawing forced and child labour in the supply chains of canteen food and public uniforms; and prohibiting dispossession of Indigenous Peoples for the minerals used in the manufacture of their vehicle fleets. This would bring alive governments’ signatures on the many international human rights protocols to which they’ve pledged allegiance.
• An end to corporate complicity in war crimes: As super-profits are made by weapons manufacturers, their tech partners, and exporters, there is an urgent need for governments and investors to insist on the international standard of heightened due diligence in challenging environments. Only a handful of investors and companies are so far taking the threat of their complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity as seriously as they do their bottom lines. As conflict around the world becomes more the rule than the exception, our movement must turn our scrutiny and demands for accountability to these corporate actors.

2025 will be another defining year for the challenge of putting human rights at the heart of business. Our worldwide movement has much to be proud of, but our eyes must be wide open to the threats we face. Fortunately, we have enormous solidarity within our movement. And globally in 2025 we have COP30 chaired by Brazil, and the G20 chaired by South Africa. Both governments have been clear that they see democracy, rights, and climate justice as central to their approach to international progress.