As part of the TWAILR symposium on the United Nations Centre for Transnational Corporations (UNCTC), Shahd Hammouri reflects on the legacy and relevance of the UNCTC for contemporary questions around corporate accountability in contexts of war, apartheid and occupation.
TWAILR: Reflections ~ 87/2026
As recently highlighted in the 2025 report of Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, corporations are fundamental to sustaining the grave illegalities committed by the state of Israel, constituting an ‘economy of genocide’. These entities not only enable such illegal Israeli acts but also themselves actively inflict economic and physical harm upon the Palestinian population.
The collapse of the UN Code of Conduct for Transnational Corporations in the early 1990s led to the rise of a voluntary legal regime dependent on corporate goodwill. But as Albanese’s report demonstrates, addressing corporate complicity in conflict demands a new strategy. This strategy must be twofold. First, we must advocate for a framework that revives the principles championed by the UN Code of Conduct and embodied in the work of the UN Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC). These principles include rejecting the supremacy of market rules based solely on globalized profit maximization. Second, we must maximize the potential of the existing regime.
In a global legal system where profit consistently overrides public international law, the second strategy can be pursued through the tactic of translating atrocity into risk. Though not radical, this step can facilitate larger tactical moves. One possible method is to establish alternative accountability mechanisms that serve as repositories of information, signalling to the market the inherent risks of such investments. Establishing a UN Public Tribunal for these corporations could be one way of producing reliable information for such a repository. Such a public tribunal could be modelled on the public hearings for TNCs operating in apartheid South Africa and occupied Namibia — one of the UN Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC)’s more notable initiatives. This ad hoc mechanism was not a judicial body, but functioned to provide recommendations for subsequent action by the UN General Assembly, contributing to the broader effort to end apartheid and occupation.
By creating significant reputational and legal risks for companies, such a tribunal would complement other efforts to end corporate involvement in the Israeli war economy – and in turn make grave violations of international law unprofitable. In the interim, it would offer an opportunity to revive the discussion about the role of corporations in atrocities. The UN Treaty Talks on Business and Human Rights have repeatedly dodged this discussion, despite the efforts of the representatives of Palestine and Cuba to argue for the urgency of this issue.
The apartheid South African government, like Israel today, violated the prohibition against apartheid and was an illegal occupier of Namibia. This was a context of systemic and structural grave illegalities, woven into the state’s institutional infrastructure. Over a thousand transnational corporations (TNCs) operated within its national market, which was deeply integrated into global value chains. Initial international efforts to condemn South Africa began with voluntary economic sanctions, which eventually became compulsory.
Responding the to the request of the UN Economic and Social Council, the UNCTC established the ad hoc mechanism of the Public Panel for Transnational Corporations in 1989. The most notable thing about the UN Public Panel’s approach was its abandonment of the narrow frameworks of direct criminal or civil responsibility. The Panel confronted the reality of war economies, and the leveraged role of corporations in this eco-system of violence. The Panel’s analysis addressed both direct and structural forms of corporate involvement. It reasoned that TNCs sustained apartheid directly and indirectly by strengthening the minority regime while benefiting from apartheid laws and cheap labor, thereby demonstrating their capacity to be aware of the wider context. The panel stressed the autonomy of TNCs in deciding to invest or divest, particularly in a territory experiencing armed conflict.
Furthermore, the panel noted that a TNC’s ‘mere presence’ in the territory entailed benefiting from the apartheid regime and afforded symbolic recognition to an illegal situation. This position challenges the presumed status of ‘commercial neutrality’ in contexts involving systemic violations of international law.
The panel discussed the arms industry’s indirect, structural role in sustaining and enhancing apartheid South Africa’s military position. It recommended direct divestment from any arms corporations operating in and supplying the regime. The panel extended similar analysis to the information technology and automobile industries.
An underlying corporate duty of care—an obligation not to exacerbate the precarity of those affected by a war economy—can also be inferred from the panel’s condemnation of extractive corporations. These firms were criticized for exploiting natural resources in occupied Namibia, thereby violating the people’s right to sovereignty over their natural resources. The panel also condemned corporations for directly infringing upon their employees’ socio-economic rights. Accordingly, it urgently recommended divestment from transnational corporations in the extractive sector, and reparations for victims.
Regarding the oil and gas industry, the panel recognized its significant leverage over the South African economy, particularly through its role in facilitating the regime’s violations. Consequently, the panel endorsed the ongoing oil embargoes instated by the UN Security Council.
Finally, the context of systemic international law violations simplified the panel’s assessment of the finance industry’s involvement. It was clear that financing provided to the South African government through banks and other institutions facilitated these systemic violations. The panel further recommended that financial actors leverage their contractual power by stipulating an end to apartheid as a condition for future financing.
The legacy of the Public Tribunal offers a valuable model for a similar initiative concerning Palestine. It also provides a discursive framework for reimagining corporate involvement in war. The analysis positions corporations as privileged actors with the capacity to leverage their economic power. It captures the complexity of corporate relations and accounts for the networked nature of global value chains. This perspective is critically absent today and must be revived. The extreme case of Palestine may represent a historic opportunity to resurrect these discursive and justice-oriented frameworks in the face of global corporate power.
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