“Get real or we'll get nothing: Reflections on the First Session of the Intergovernmental Working Group on a Business and Human Rights Treaty”, 22 Jul 2015

Further international legalization in business and human rights is inevitable as well as being desirable in order to close global governance gaps…An Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) was established…to elaborate a binding instrument on business and human rights, with no specific focus and limited to transnational corporations…Attendance by states overall was poor…If present dynamics continue, the process is likely to yield one of two outcomes: no treaty at all, or one that squeaks through to adoption but is ratified by few if any major home countries and thus would be of no help to the victims in whose name the negotiations were launched...[I]t is imperative that progress continue to be made on implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs)…and that civil society continues to invest time and energy to pressure governments and enterprises to do so…[C]ivil society needs to help by advancing workable proposals that states cannot ignore or dismiss out of hand— and which, therefore, have a chance of making a difference where it matters most: in the daily lives of people...