The Project

The Commerce, Crime and Human Rights Project (“the Project”) was launched jointly by Amnesty International and the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) on 26 February 2014. The Project seeks to identify and address why States and law enforcement are rarely pursuing corporate criminal accountability in human rights cases.

A group of eminent legal experts, with the support of Amnesty International and ICAR, developed “The Corporate Crimes Principles: Advancing Investigations and Prosecutions in Human Rights Cases” (“the Principles”) to encourage State actors to combat corporate crimes more effectively. The Principles seek to address the impunity gap by providing a common, global approach to the investigation and prosecution of corporate crime, taking better account of the range of corporate actors that may be implicated.

The Principles are aimed at law enforcement officials, including police, investigators, prosecutors, judges and government legal counsel as well as State executive and legislative bodies. They have been developed in consultation with investigators, prosecutors, lawyers and civil society actors specialising in human rights. The Principles are intended to ensure that corporate crimes do not go unpunished. This will benefit victims and their representatives, human rights defenders, lawyers and law-abiding corporate actors.