As Rio+20 approaches, we are publishing two new articles on corporations:
Calling the corporations to account is a short history of why corporate power was not tackled at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, even though many people went to Rio with the purpose of limiting it. It is written to stimulate efforts to make Rio+20 the place where we finally begin the international process to control corporate power.
Corporations are not human, so why should they have human rights? explains how corporations came to have human rights, and asks whether this is desirable, and what we might do about it.
Who’s in Charge? Through these articles, we also want to highlight a previous piece of work. This is a short history of the development of the modern corporation and corporate personhood in the UK, written by Daniel Bennett at the request of Helena Paul, for the Programme on Corporations, Law and Democracy.