"Binding rules for business, rights for people", 28 Feb 2017

Multinational companies affect the lives of people and the environment all over the world...Yet there are no real international binding instruments to hold companies accountable...This needs to change, and last year the seeds were sown for an international agreement that could put human rights before corporate interests.  The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is preparing a set of legally-binding rules for transnational corporations in relation to human rights known as “the UN treaty”, and on 9 March they will be taking the next steps nurturing it into life.  The UN treaty intends to protect people from human rights abuses by corporations and bring corporate actors to justice, and the implications for the world’s largest companies and their supply chain will be profound, obliging them to respect human rights in a way they have never had to before.  The European Union now has an unprecedented opportunity to put human rights before corporate rights by continuing discussions around the UN treaty next month... – to constrain and control big business, and to deter and punish human rights abuses by the world’s largest companies.