NGOs, Knowledge, and Corporate Accountability in a Shrinking Civic Space
NGOs have long been the evidentiary backbone of the business and human rights (BHR) ecosystem. Through grounded investigations and reporting anchored in workers’ testimonies, they generate the baseline facts that recognise exploitation as such and identify responsible actors. That knowledge shapes how courts, regulators, investors, and the public define and respond to corporate human rights violations, and in practice often sets the agenda to which both companies and states must react. Yet as civic space across Southeast Asia and beyond continues to contract, this knowledge infrastructure, the very basis for accountability, is becoming dangerously fragile.
The unique contribution of NGOs to business and human rights cannot be replicated by social auditors or consultancy firms [1]. They maintain trusted, often long-term relationships with the workers, migrants, and community organisers who occupy the most precarious positions in global supply chains – including informal workers, recruitment networks, and rural or remote operations. It is this proximity that allows NGOs to document everyday realities of human rights due diligence (HRDD) lapses, harms, and unsafe working conditions that would otherwise remain invisible. Perhaps more importantly, NGOs act as translators, transforming personal testimonies into legal and policy language capable of travelling across borders: from court filings and US Customs petitions to UN submissions and investor briefings. This translation gives structure to advocacy, ensuring that the lived experience of workers feeds directly into the mechanisms of legal and corporate accountability.
The power of such knowledge is visible in the cases it has shaped. Investigations by Thai and Cambodian NGOs into the Phatthana and Bumblebee seafood supply chains [2][3], for instance, helped expose exploitation that led to legal filings, corporate reforms and heightened scrutiny from global buyers, serving as proof that field evidence can inform meaningful change. In the US, reports compiled by NGOs on forced labour conditions have directly triggered Customs and Border Protection Withhold Release Orders [4], demonstrating how advocacy outputs can translate into tangible enforcement. Hence, changes that shape the operating environment of NGOs also shape the extent to which corporate conduct can be documented, amplified, and ultimately enter official and public decision‑making.
However, the environment in which this knowledge is produced is deteriorating rapidly. In countries like Laos and Vietnam, there has been a wave of restrictions on NGO registration and foreign funding [5]. Civil society faces mounting administrative and legal pressures, higher compliance costs, and at times, direct harassment or surveillance. The effect is cumulative: NGOs may now need to spend more resources defending their existence, securing funding, and ensuring regulatory compliance, than documenting reality.
This tightening of civic space risks creating a deep knowledge gap in the business and human rights field [6]. As independent documentation declines, the evidence base on which accountability depends becomes thinner and more uneven. In the absence of credible field research, regulators, investors, and multilateral institutions must rely increasingly on corporate self‑reporting, commissioned audits, or ESG ratings that may lack both the perspective and the relational trust that NGOs bring to worker engagement. Worker participation then becomes more transactional and less protected, weakening the ability to detect early signs of exploitation – such as changes in recruitment fees, new subcontracting layers, or shifts in working hours – that rarely appear in formal disclosures but are immediately visible to embedded civil society partners. The danger is not just silence, but distortion: a business and human rights landscape in which data reflects a mirage rather than reality.
For practitioners committed to meaningful HRDD, a healthy civil society is an essential part of the enabling environment. The work of NGOs provides the data, expertise, and trusted relationships that make responsible business conduct possible in practice. Treating NGO partnerships as operational priorities recognises their role in documenting risks, defending against SLAPPs, and maintaining safe avenues for workers and communities to share evidence.
Effective HRDD therefore depends on sustained, flexible NGO support, not as philanthropy but as an investment in the systems that make accountability, worker voice, and regulatory cooperation credible and workable. Ultimately, defending civic space goes beyond simply protecting advocacy, it is central to maintaining the integrity of knowledge and public discourse.
[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2021/694782/IPOL_STU
(2021)694782_EN.pdf
[2] https://www.cohenmilstein.com/case-study/bumble-bee-foods-longline-fishing-tvpra-litigation/
[4] https://www.dlapiper.com/en/insights/publications/2025/12/supply-chains-in-focus-cbp-forced-labor-enforcement-continues-with-wro
[5] https://eastasiaforum.org/2025/11/28/regulation-tightens-around-civil-society-in-the-mekong-region/
[6] https://www.trust.org/2025/12/09/legal-needs-rising-ngos-attacks-civil-society-funding-cuts/