Economic Justice and Rights

The Economic Justice and Rights Division works to build just economies based on respect for human rights. We investigate how the global economic system both drives inequality that undermines human rights and enables private actors to harm communities, workers, and the environment. Our work is driven by rigorous, thorough, and objective investigations. The Poverty and Inequality program exposes policies and practices that concentrate wealth in private hands at the expense of public well-being, challenging corruption, deregulation, privatization, and the dismantling and underfunding of tax-funded systems of social protection. Our Corporate Accountability program works to ensure that products and services are free from abuse or exploitation by holding businesses accountable for the human rights impacts of their operations, investments, and supply chains. Our work illuminates opaque and diffuse global supply chains and investment flows that obscure involvement in human rights abuses—from forced labor to environmental destruction—and advocates for stronger regulation of industries at home and abroad.