If the first few weeks of this year have shown us anything, it is that the only certainty in 2026 is uncertainty. Geopolitical alignments are shifting rapidly, economic power is increasingly weaponised, and long-settled assumptions about the rule of law and multilateralism are being openly tested. Rising imperial ambition - from Ukraine to Greenland - is not an aberration, but a rupture, and the rules governing markets and states alike have changed. For the business and human rights movement, this is not just background noise. It is the terrain on which we now operate.

We are confronting a global business context in which some companies actively enable this new, dystopian normal, while others retreat into silence, calculating that speaking up is too risky, too costly or too politically inconvenient. Both responses pose an insidious threat to human rights, and it is our task to challenge them both.

The military strike on Venezuela at the start of the year is instructive. Almost immediately, the USA announced that its companies would take control of the country’s vast oil reserves, with revenues effectively locked into US supply chains. Public responses from the oil majors appear to have been cautious, and focused nearly exclusively on their own financial risks, given Venezuela’s volatile context and uncertainty over how long and to what extent the USA will underwrite those risks. They understand well that the capital investment cycle may not match the US political cycle, which will in turn direct foreign policy.

What the narrowness of the dialogue reveals, however, is the absence of any real consideration of the human rights risks these actions create for Venezuelans, or indeed any regard for the just transition to renewable energy that our warming world, and the Venezuelan economy, urgently need.

That’s the broader danger: that markets, entirely unmoored from social purpose and human rights, undermine any hope of long-term, sustainable prosperity. Volker Turk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, rightly declared : “human rights need to be central to Venezuela’s future – not an afterthought, taking a back seat to negotiations around the exploitation of fossil fuels”.   If companies - and the states that regulate them – allow short-term geopolitical winds and ambitions to dictate their ethics and operations, we will face a future in which human rights are permanently subordinated to transactional gains. This is obviously terrible for communities and workers. It’s also bad for sustainable business.

Sharpening our focus

Recognising that these shifts present growing challenges to our business and human rights movement is, of course, the first and easiest step.

But it is worth recalling that the international laws and standards of human rights were in some ways drafted for just these moments. The opportunity and obligation for us now is to insist that they are upheld, even as the ground moves beneath us.

Our focus on human rights in the fields and factories of global supply chains remains vital. But we must respond rapidly to this changing global context to remain effective and relevant, through evidence, alliances and alternatives, and by broadening our movement. The danger otherwise is not only that human rights abuse gains increased purchase in business operations, but that our vision and ambition for a more just, fair and equitable world is sidelined by the exercise of unchecked imperial power by states, and the unregulated “animal spirits” of irresponsible business. We must be confident in our purpose, and sure-footed in our response.

The opportunity 

To this end, there is good news. Despite the mounting threats to human rights, equality and self-determination, powerful counter-currents are emerging. We have seen recent advances in human rights due diligence regulation in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and Canada: the Just Transition mechanism agreed at COP30 in Brazil, the growing global grassroots movement for bold regulatory initiatives to control tech giants, and the ILO’s binding global standard for decent work in the gig economy.

These advances – and the 20 years of progress on human rights in business already made before this –  provide a strong foundation on which to build solutions for some of the greatest collective problems our world faces: the ecological crisis, obscene inequalities of power and wealth, a largely unregulated tech revolution, and a deficit of governance in markets. We can now add imperial ambition to the list. Further embedding human rights in the economic rules governing supply chains, the transition to green economies and the tech revolution is essential.

To do this, our broad coalition must stand with and be guided by grassroots movements and human rights defenders in confronting abuse, generating the evidence needed to shape sound policy. We can join responsible businesses together to defend hard-won gains in repressive environments, and at the same time push for ambitious regulatory reforms where progressive forces are established, or have momentum. Most importantly, our strategies can work in concert to articulate not just what we are resisting, but what we champion - a compelling vision for a sustainable “new economy” built on shared prosperity.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was right in his reflection that “the old order is gone” – and nostalgia for it is not a strategy. Instead, there is opportunity to build something better, grounded in the growing, global appetite for radical action to build a secure and sustainable future that re-establishes public trust in each other, in our institutions and in our economies. Companies and investors around the world have a choice. Either they will seek uncertain shelter in the crony capitalism of imperial projects, or they can strike out with like-minded governments and civil society to build the only sustainable future that rebuilds public trust through tackling inequality and the ecological crisis.