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| source: fian.org* |
A joint statement was drafted by participants of the first annual People's Forum on Human Rights and Businesses calling for an international legally binding instrument on human rights, transnational corporations and other business enterprises. The Forum demands the establishement of monitoring mechanisms that include the supervision of extraterritorial obilgations of transnational corporations.
27 November, 2013 | ESCR Net
Participants of Peoples’ Forum request binding instrument to regulate TNCs including ETOs
The Peoples’ Forum on Human Rights and Business, convened by the (Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) ESCR-net and Forum Asia, took place in Bangkok, Thailand from November 5-7 as the first global forum by civil society organizations and social movements on the challenges posed by TNCs’ abuses of human rights. At the forum, participants drafted a Joint Statement calling for an international legally binding instrument on human rights, transnational corporations and other business enterprises, which is currently circulating among (Civil Society Organizations) CSOs and social movements and is open for signatures until November 28.
The elements of the envisaged treaty include extraterritorial States’ obligations. Under this instrument, States' Parties would be required to monitor and regulate the operations of business enterprises under their jurisdiction, including when acting outside their national territory, with a view to prevent the occurrence of abuses of human rights in the course of those operations and to provide legal liability for business enterprises. Moreover, the treaty requires States' Parties to provide access to an effective remedy by any State concerned and provides an international monitoring and accountability mechanism. Including remedies is the access to justice for foreign victims that have suffered harm from acts or omissions by a business enterprise, specifically in situations where there are bases for the States involved to exercise their territorial or extraterritorial obligations.
The requirements made by the envisaged treaty reflect elements of the Maastricht Principles on (Extraterritorial Obligations) ETOs – in particular relating to the bases for protection (Principle 25c) and the provision of effective remedy by any State concerned (Principle 37).
* The picture shows Debbie Stothard, Coordinator of Alt-SEAN Burma and Secretary General of FIDH (International Federation of Human Rights) at the ESCR-Net Peoples' Forum on Human Rights and Business, Bangkok.
Read the Joint Statement of the Peoples' Forum in Bangkok here.
