The Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room of the Palace of Nations, Geneva is the meeting room of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Wikicommons/ Ludovic Courtès. Some rights reserved.
Earlier this autumn, Professor John Ruggie, author of the UN Guiding Principles on TNCs and Human Rights (UNGP), shared his comments on the Zero Draft treaty on transnational corporations and human rights on the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre blog (1). His core concerns are that the zero draft has not adequately dealt with ‘scale’ and ‘liability’. I think Ruggie’s arguments in opposition to the binding treaty are misdirected and that they fail to recognize the historic opportunity offered by the Human Rights Council to create a human rights remedy system for corporate abuse across national boundaries.
The issues Ruggie raised in opposition to a binding treaty seemed to have influenced the delegations from Europe. On the final day of the fourth session (19 Oct 2018), the EC announced that they and their member countries were leaving the chamber as they could not agree with the Chairperson’s recommendations to continue negotiating a new international instrument on TNCs and human rights. But before I address Ruggie's two major concerns with a binding agreement, I’d like to make three preliminary observations.
