Reclaim UN from corporate capture!

On June 20-22, governments gather in Brazil for the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development to agree on measures to address the multiple crises the world is facing on issues such as energy, food, climate and finance.

However, what we see coming out of the preparatory negotiations, is not at all pointing in the right direction. The Zero Draft of the Rio+20 Declaration highlights the role of business as promoter of the so-called ‘green economy’ and advocates market-based mechanisms that primarily benefit business, while failing to hold business accountable for its role in creating the financial, climate, food and other crises.

The expected outcome of the negotiations raises strong concerns about the growing influence of major corporations and business lobby groups within the UN: their influence on the positions of national governments in multilateral negotiations; their dominance in certain UN discussion spaces, and in certain UN bodies. Increasingly we see UN policies that do not serve the public interest but rather support the commercial interests of companies or business sectors. The UN is captured by the corporate sector.

To reclaim the UN from corporate capture, several civil society organizations have prepared a statement that will be sent to the UN.

FIAN International has signed on and we invite as many civil society organisations as possible to sign the statement, demanding to stop the corporate capture of the UN.