ERI Comments on the UN's Draft Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights

For the past five years, EarthRights International (ERI) has been engaging with the United Nations' Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, Harvard professor John Ruggie.  The culmination of the Special Representative's mandate is the Draft Guiding Principles for the Implementation of the United Nations "Protect, Respect, and Remedy" Framework, which are designed to implement the framework for business and human rights adopted by the Human Rights Council.

Overall, ERI welcomes the Guiding Principles as a step forward in the codification of the human rights responsibilities of governments with respect to corporations, and of corporations themselves.  There are certainly areas in which we would like to see the draft principles strengthened or clarified, however, and we have now submitted our comments to the Special Representative.  Numerous other NGOs and interest groups, including corporations and governments, have submitted their comments as well.  The goal in this process is not to change international law, but to actually provide guidance to governments and corporations about what their current legal obligations are and how they might best be implemented.

We hope that the Guiding Principles, once finalized, will be followed on by a robust mechanism for implementation and further development of the legal issues around business and human rights.  Ultimately, the UN system needs a mechanism in which specific instances of business-related human rights abuses can be heard and remedied. Most desirable would be an effective multilateral treaty to address aspects of corporate human rights abuse.

The Special Representative's mandate expires at the end of February. Update: It's been pointed out to us that Ruggie's mandate doesn't actually expire until June 2011.  However, his work will basically be done by March, because it needs to be translated before submission to the Human Rights Council. In the coming weeks, we expect to make a further submission to the Special Representative on the question of what should follow the end of this mandate.