This article examines how concentrated corporate power in the technology sector reshapes repression and human rights harm, arguing that an integrated Business and Human Rights (BHR) and Transitional Justice (TJ) approach is needed. It identifies three persistent gaps in BHR practice—regulatory fragmentation, limited access to remedy and Global North dominance—and demonstrates how TJ principles, particularly victim-centred participation, Global South leadership and transformative reparations, can address these challenges. Drawing on Latin American experiences with truth-seeking, reparations and corporate accountability, the article develops a hybrid BHR–TJ framework designed to confront power asymmetries, strengthen remedies and embed guarantees of non-repetition in global governance. The argument positions this integration as a forward-looking response to the structural harms of the digital economy, offering tools to move beyond proceduralism towards systemic corporate accountability. By combining BHR’s regulatory tools with TJ’s participatory and transformative approaches, the article contributes a novel accountability model for the digital era.

The global arms trade stands at the crossroads of security, business and human rights. While historically dominated by security narratives, increasing recognition of the arms industry’s business functions has led to calls for greater corporate accountability for the adverse human rights impacts of arms production and transfers. Business and Human Rights (BHR) provides innovative approaches for addressing regulatory and conceptual gaps in arms trade governance, and, in particular, offers two key paths forward for bringing coherency to arms trade governance and recalibrating the balance between security and business interests and human rights protection. First, as a field of practice, BHR can be utilised to develop comprehensive and coordinated due diligence that bridges silos between human rights, corruption, diversion and lack of transparency, to overcome regulatory fragmentation. Second, as a discourse, BHR introduces a conceptual foundation for reframing the status of human rights in arms trade governance and impelling corporate leadership to elevate human rights protection.

This study presents three key steps to enable the Business and Human Rights (BHR) research agenda to promote and advance greater applicability to the emerging challenges in the field. Drawing on research conducted on BHR sources (almost exclusively by Brazilian and Spanish-speaking authors), this article aims to demonstrate the need for further BHR scholarship to simultaneously: (i) identify and remedy epistemic biases through reflexive engagement with a victim-centred scholarship from the Global South that recentres BHR research on the perspective of affected communities; (ii) move from consideration to co-production by grounding BHR theory in practice via participatory methodologies and dialogue between communities, researchers and corporations; and (iii) by aligning with steps one and two, recontextualize Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) research into an integrated Human Rights and Environmental Due Diligence (HREDD) approach that incorporates environmental and climate dimensions and ensure meaningful, victim-centred engagement with affected communities.

External experts play a crucial role in implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, advising businesses on how to identify, prevent and mitigate risks. Yet their responsibility remains underexplored in relation to judicial remedy. This article addresses this gap by investigating the involvement of external experts in strategic litigation concerning alleged corporate human rights harms. While such litigation primarily seeks remediation and societal change, it also reveals overlooked actors within legal processes. Using the concept of ‘visibilisation’, this study examines three landmark cases to explore how courts understand experts’ legal subjectivity. Findings suggest that this subjectivity encompasses both an evidentiary and functional role in corporate processes, raising important questions regarding accountability. By highlighting their influence on the corporate responsibility to respect human rights and human rights due diligence (HRDD), the article advances understanding of expert responsibility and considers its future in the emerging era of mandatory HRDD.

This article explores digital colonialism in Africa, focusing on how Big Tech and local intermediaries perpetuate data exploitation, infrastructure dependency and algorithmic bias. Applying a Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) lens, it draws parallels between historical colonialism and the modern digital economy, highlighting persistent power imbalances in data control and tech sovereignty. Multinational firms from the Global North extract and monetise African data with little benefit to local communities, reinforcing dependency. Local actors (governments, tech elites and influencers) often enable this through policy gaps and cultural alignment with Western platforms. The article examines the impact on data sovereignty, human rights and economic autonomy, including risks of surveillance and silencing local voices. It calls for policy reforms, investment in African tech ecosystems, digital literacy and robust regional regulation. Ultimately, it advocates for digital justice and self-governance to reclaim Africa’s digital future.

This article explores the variation surrounding the semi-modals be going to and gonna. While gonna is frequently mentioned alongside be going to, it remains under-described in traditional grammars and academic literature. However, recent studies within Construction Grammar suggest that gonna may represent an independent construction, prompting a reconsideration of other variants within the be going to / gonna paradigm such as gon and imma, which appear to derive directly from gonna and no longer from be going to. In light of recent work, what have traditionally been regarded as mere ‘phonetic realizations’ or ‘orthographic variants’ may in fact play a more significant role in the formation and definition of constructions, raising questions about the structure of constructional networks. This article analyzes the immediate syntactic environment of the variants to account for both the variation of forms and the status of such forms. The study is conducted using two corpora that are particularly prone to showing linguistic innovations and language change: a spontaneous spoken corpus and a web corpus. Findings indicate that shorter variants often involve elision of be and that gonna is more grammaticalized than going to, based on the types of verbs they precede.

This paper builds on a thought experiment by Professor Harry van Buren, asking what might emerge if the Business and Human Rights field took a temporary ‘break’ from the UN Guiding Principles (UNGPs). It critically analyzes how the UNGPs’ pragmatic and consensus-oriented design, while instrumental in institutionalizing the field, has also shifted its normative orientation. The paper argues that the increasing dominance of procedural pragmatism has led to compliance-driven approaches that risk displacing more justice-oriented, participatory visions of accountability. In response, the paper aims to contribute to potential reimagining of the field outside of the confines of the UNGPs by offering an alternative pathway grounded in Critical Dialogic Accounting and Accountability, Worker-driven Social Responsibility, and prefigurative politics. The paper concludes with a reflection that the future of BHR depends not just on expanding the implementation of existing norms but on rethinking what accountability can look like when built from below.

This article examines the evolving landscape of accounting, distinguishing between mainstream practices and critical developments that challenge conventional notions of accounting and accountability. By engaging with perspectives that reimagine accounting’s role, the paper highlights how rights intersect with accounting practices and how accounting, in turn, shapes rights. While financial and non-financial disclosures can expose human rights abuses, concerns persist over ‘accountability-washing’ and the dominance of economic interests. The reluctance of standard-setting bodies, such as the International Sustainability Standards Board, to integrate human rights underscores the political and institutional barriers to change. The article concludes by exploring future research directions through which business and human rights scholars and critical accounting researchers can mutually benefit from each other’s insights.

Strategic litigation has emerged as a prominent tool in the business and human rights (BHR) field, offering a pathway to promote corporate accountability, test innovative legal arguments and push for systemic change. While often framed as private tort actions, such litigation frequently aims to shape broader norms beyond individual remedies. This article explores how strategic litigation contributes to the evolution of corporate responsibility to respect human rights by analysing two case studies: supply chain liability claims in English courts and corporate climate litigation in the Netherlands. Drawing on these examples, the article argues that, despite its limitations, strategic BHR litigation plays an important role in translating soft law standards, including the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, into enforceable legal duties.