"WILPF Statement: Working Group on Transnational Corporations and Business Enterprises with Respect to Human Rights (Day 2)", 25 Oct 2016

...[T]he adverse human rights impacts of corporate activities are not gender neutral. For example, women experience direct and indirect consequences of mining activities in different, and often more prominent, ways than men...Violations against women identified in our research include gender discrimination, slavery-like conditions, deterioration of reproductive health (e.g. menstrual disruption, miscarriages, vaginal yeast infections), violence, forced displacement, sexual exploitation in (and because of) artisanal mines, exposure to HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases...[C]orporations “should determine whether their activities create, encourage, reinforce or exacerbate existing gender-based inequalities” of their proposed corporate activity.  She also recommended that they be required to ensure that their supply chains are subject to strict gender considerations.  These are measures that should be reflected in a treaty.  We would like to ask: how can extraterritorial obligations of states contribute to gender impact assessments with regard to the impact of companies’ activities outside their home state and throughout their supply chains?