Global Campaign to Reclaim Peoples Sovereignty, Dismantle Corporate Power and Stop Impunity
UNHRC 39th Session
Geneva, 19th September 2018
Statement Re: EU JST on OEIGWG’s procedures.
With a new maneuver at the UNHRC, the EU aims at protecting TNCs and not human rights of affected peoples.
The Global Campaign to Reclaim Peoples Sovereignty, Dismantle Corporate Power and Stop Impunity (Global Campaign) has been alerted that the European Union (EU) and some allied states are preparing a statement for the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) that aims at indirectly questions the process of the UN Legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises. Initiated after a vote at the UNHRC in June 2014-Resolution 26/9 mandated an Open Ended Inter Governmental Working Group (OEIGWG) to establish a legally binding international instrument.
The Global Campaign, as global network integrating by more than 250 social movements, trade unions, affected communities by Transnational Corporations (TNCs) activities and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), is deeply concerned by this new move of the EU to disrupt a process that is urgently demanded by communities affected by TNC operations worldwide in order to ensure their access to justice and the end of corporate impunity. For us it is clear that any action to undermine the continuation of this process only reinforce the impunity of TNCs. We call upon the EU members to stop this maneuvers that hinder the protection of the victims and the communities affected by the activities of TNCs and their access to effective justice.
We are on the eve of the session that will initiate a face-to-face text negotiation of the Zero Draft for a Treaty on Transnational Corporations with respect to Human Rights. This is a major historic step that addresses more than three decades of demands from people all over the world, in particular those movements in the frontline of defending human rights and environmental integrity in the face of corporate devastation and corporate crime.
European TNCs have long been denounced by affected communities, for systematic Human Rights violations and destruction of environment in regions such as Latin America, Africa and Asia. EU Member States should be the governments more active in the process towards the UN Binding Treaty in order to ensure corporate accountability of European TNCs.
As Global Campaign to Reclaim Peoples Sovereignty, Dismantle Corporate Power and Stop Impunity we strongly urge all individual members states of the UN to keep and ensure, with sufficient funds, the smooth continuity of the OEIGWG process, and active engagement in the negotiation of the Zero Draft. The time is now to be decisive – more than 100 UN member states engaged at the OEIGWG in 2017 – this is the moment to accelerate the negotiations on the Zero Draft. Affected communities expect no less!
See here the Treaty Alliance statement
