The third UN working group session on a proposed binding business and human rights treaty gets to the heart of the matter

The Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises that is tasked with developing a binding instrument on multinational enterprises’ human rights violations responsibilities, gathered for the third and final time in Geneva, for a meeting that will last until the end of the week. This time round however, the delegations are working from a base document containing elements that define the contours of the draft legally binding instrument. The document proposes implementing a requirement for businesses to adopt a ‘vigilance plan’ that can pre-empt human rights violations and the establishment of recourse avenues that can assess events in countries where multinational company subsidiaries operate and not just where any violations may have occurred.