"Discussions on scope of the treaty on day four of the intergovernmental working group session in Geneva", 28 Oct 2016

Two meetings were held on the fourth and penultimate day of this second session of the IGWG on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises (TNCs-OBEs), the first one on defining the scope of the future Treaty, and the second one on prevention, remedy, accountability and access to justice.  During the first half of the day, the Working Group discussed the scope of the future Treaty in relation, firstly, to the types of corporate actors who will be subject to the new Treaty, and secondly, to the scope of the rights that need to be included in the legally binding instrument...The debate on whether or not the Treaty should apply to TNCs or to all business enterprises had echoes of the discussion on this issue from last year...There was a plurality of views from civil society on this issue also.  CETIM and ESCR-Net both agreed that the priority for the treaty should be governance over transnational corporations...The afternoon meeting focused on ways forward to implement the UN Guiding Principles (UNGPs) and their relation to the elaboration of the binding instruments...