UN Urged to Address Corporate Human Rights Abuses

By an IPS Correspondent Reprint | | Print |

GENEVA, Dec 4 2013 (IPS) - A statement signed by more than 100 civil society organisations and social movements calls for member states to take steps towards establishing a binding international treaty to deal with corporate human rights abuses. The statement coincides with the beginning of the second annual UN Forum on Business & Human Rights in Geneva.

The Joint Statement originated as an initiative of participants who attended the International Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Network (ESCR-Net) Peoples’ Forum on Human Rights & Business, which took place in Bangkok last November.

Those who’ve signed the statement affirm “the applicability of human rights obligations to the operations of transnational corporations” and have called on States to “monitor and regulate the operations of business enterprises under their jurisdiction, including when acting outside their national territory”, according to a press release Wednesday.

The obligation on States to do this is commonly referred to as States’ extra-territorial obligations, or ‘ETOs’, as outlined in part by the Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

“I strongly believe that we need a binding international regulation for businesses because of the growing human rights abuses all over the world” said  Legborsi Saro, president of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People of Nigeria and board member of ESCR-Net.

Chris Grove, director of ESCR-Net said binding regulation is an important step in establishing the primary obligation to respect human rights before any other consideration of private gain or economic growth”. “For these rights to be meaningful, they must be accompanied by effective remedies for individuals and groups who experience violations”, he added.

This wide-ranging call for a binding treaty is distinct from other non-binding approaches currently being promoted at the international level. In particular, the call includes a requirement that States establish an “accountability mechanism”, something detractors have readily pointed out is missing from the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, according to the press release.

Nevertheless, despite such differences in approach a treaty itself could be a natural accompaniment to the efforts underway to advance these Guiding Principles, rather than a distraction from the efforts to advance their implementation.

Signatories to this statement are a broad mix of civil society groups including both social movements as well as small and large NGOs from all regions of the world. These broad number of signatories call for action from the Human Rights Council in the form of the establishment of “an open ended working group tasked with a drafting mandate”.