Justice Initiative Funds Corporate Accountability Litigation Incubator Grants

LONDON—In 2025, the Open Society Justice Initiative funded five organizations through a new litigation incubator focused on corporate accountability. The incubator provides pre‑litigation funding and support to groups developing innovative and precedent‑setting cases against corporate actors operating in Europe. Throughout 2026, it will support participating organizations to exchange ideas, share litigation experience, and contribute to a more coordinated corporate accountability litigation field.

The proposals under incubation address issues including social media addiction and monetization, corporate responsibility for war crimes, and environmental degradation. The incubator aims to strengthen early‑stage case building, support new forms of accountability for corporate actors, and help build a more resilient field capable of responding to evolving global challenges.

LexCollective

LexCollective will pursue strategic litigation to hold European-based financial institutions and commodity traders accountable for enabling atrocity crimes linked to the illicit trade of conflict minerals in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Armed groups profit from gold, coltan, cobalt, and tin extracted amid widespread violence, while European actors benefit through trade finance, investment, and weak due-diligence practices. By mapping financial and supply-chain networks and pursuing criminal, civil, and regulatory actions in Europe, the project aims to disrupt the financial architecture sustaining atrocities, strengthen anti-money-laundering enforcement, and create pathways to accountability and remedy for affected communities—advancing a more just and responsible global energy transition.

SECTA Research

SECTA Research will be mapping the evidence, crime base, and jurisdictional options for criminal prosecutions of individuals and companies within military technology supply chains who may have aided and abetted serious international crimes using guided weapons systems in Ukraine. If successful, this would be the first time that criminal complicity of component or technology suppliers in military supply chains have been held criminally responsible for international crimes their products have facilitated.

What to Fix

This initiative aims to develop the foundations for robust, well-substantiated legal cases capable of advancing transparency and accountability in social media monetization governance. The project strengthens the evidence base, analyses platform disclosures, identifies systemic gaps in due diligence and oversight, and explores potential litigation angles to help drive greater transparency and accountability in how social media companies channel—and in some cases withhold—funds to content publishers.

GFF and Bits of Freedom

Social media platforms are designed to maximize time spent on the platform. These practices exploit vulnerabilities of minors and undermine their autonomy and well-being. This project will research features like Snapstreaks, friend suggestions, profiled feeds, and comment sections, and how they expose minors to addiction and manipulation, on Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok. The research will fuel strategic litigation, and lawsuits will be prepared based on the Digital Services Act (DSA) and child protection standards. The goal is to set precedent: ensuring that manipulative and harmful designs are recognized as DSA violations and that platforms are required to change their systems. 

GLAN and the Transnational Legal Coalition

The Transnational Legal Coalition is an innovative network of multidisciplinary partners—local communities, legal experts, investigators, and advocacy specialists—working together to seek accountability for environmental harms. The overall aim is simple: setting precedents that demonstrate that European financial actors cannot legally profit from the destruction of the Amazon. The Coalition’s first legal actions are focused on illegal deforestation linked to beef production in the Brazilian Amazon. They plan to launch a series of coordinated legal actions across multiple European jurisdictions in 2026.