In June this year, governments gather in Brazil for the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development to agree on measures to address the multiple crises the world is facing on issues such as energy, food, climate and finance.

However, what we see coming out of the preparatory negotiations, is not at all pointing in the right direction. The Zero Draft of the Rio+20 Declaration highlights the role of business as promoter of the so-called 'green economy' and advocates market-based mechanisms that primarily benefit business, while failing to hold business accountable for its role in creating the financial, climate, food and other crises.

The expected outcome of the negotiations raises strong concerns about the growing influence of major corporations and business lobby groups within the UN: their influence on the positions of national governments in multilateral negotiations; their dominance in certain UN discussion spaces, and in certain UN bodies. Increasingly we see UN policies that do not serve the public interest but rather support the commercial interests of companies or business sectors. The UN is captured by the corporate sector.

To reclaim the UN from corporate capture, Friends of the Earth International, La Via Campesina, Jubilee South/Americas, The Transnational Institute, Third World Network, Corporate Europe Observatory, World March of Women, Polaris Institute, The Council of Canadians, and Peace and Justice in Latin America/SERPAJAL have prepared a statement that we will send to the UN.

We invite as many Civil Society Organisations as possible to sign the statement, demanding to stop the corporate capture of the UN. Please read the statement here ... and sign the name of your organisation using the form below.

We believe it is time to reclaim the UN as a peoples’ space. Join the campaign to restore the UN as people's space, setting it free from corporate capture!

Sign the civil society statement!