Working Towards a Treaty for Business and Human Rights--An Opportunity to Share Your Ideas; Call for Inputs by the Open Ended International Working Group

(Pix © 2014 Larry Catá Backer)

The Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group on Transnational Corporations  and other business enterprises was established in the wake of a successful effort by a group of states to seek a treaty based approach to the regulation of the conduct of so-called transnational enterprises under international law. This movement toward a comprehensive treaty has  been supported by a substantial number of civil society organizations and developing states, but opposed by business and developed states which have sought to further develop the Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights (see, e.g., here).  I have written about this project from the perspective of a supportive skeptic (see, here, here, here, and here).

As part of its Mandate, the first two sessions of the open-ended intergovernmental working group “shall be dedicated to conducting constructive deliberations on the content, scope, nature and form of the future international instrument.” To that end, it has issued a call for written contributions relevant ot the work of the OEIGWG on possible principles, scope and elements of an international legally binding instrument.

The Mandate with links to the call for inputs follows. Current contributions already submitted may be found  here. See here for Information Note for NGOs.

Mandate

At its 26th session, on 26 June 2014, the Human Rights Council adopted resolution 26/9 by which it decided “to establish an open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights, whose mandate shall be to elaborate an international legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises.”

The Human Rights Council also decided that the first two sessions of the open-ended intergovernmental working group “shall be dedicated to conducting constructive deliberations on the content, scope, nature and form of the future international instrument.”

The first session of the open-ended intergovernmental working group was held from 6 to 10 July 2015 in the Palais des Nations, Geneva.

The second session will take place from 24-28 October 2016, also in the Palais des Nations, Geneva (room TBC). The provisional agenda, information concerning accreditation and other relevant documentation will be made available on this web page around the first week of September. Please find the call for inputs.