In a commentary for the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, Maina Kiai, UN Sepcial Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association elaborates why it is so difficult to ensure that assembly and association rights are respected in the context of natural resource exploitation, and concludes that the best solution to the problem would be a binding international treaty that imposes human rights obligations on businesses. As Kiai puts it, the open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights tasked with leading the process towards a binding instrument has a long, arduous, but very important assignment. An instrument like this needs to affirm civil society’s interests as of equal importance as those of States and corporations, and to empower them by providing a means of effectively asserting their claims. More information is available here.
[Global Policy Forum]