Introducing this Special Issue on Corporations and Human Rights

This is a special issue of the South Bulletin. Firstly, it is a double issue, carrying the numbers 87 and 88, and having double the usual number of pages. Secondly, it is all about one issue: human rights, transnational corporations (TNCs) and other business enterprises.
The event linked to this is the first meeting of a working group in the Human Rights Council on human rights, transnational corporations and other business enterprises, which took place in July 2015 in Geneva.
This issue has had quite a long and important history. It is an important issue because there have been many adverse human rights effects of the activities of TNCs, and it has often been difficult or even impossible for the victims to get redress.
This is especially if these victims are in developing countries. They and their governments are usually too weak to make the foreign companies accountable for their environmental, health or other effects.
The domestic systems of law and enforcement may firstly be inadequate to take on giant transnationals. These companies and their executives can also return to their country of origin and then often be outside the reach of the people and countries in which the adverse effect took place.
More than three decades after the Bhopal tragedy in 1984, the many thousands of victims and their families still have no redress from the American company. The people of Niger Delta in Nigeria whose lands were contaminated by Shell have fought for but not yet obtained justice. The indigenous people of the Amazon in Ecuador have been pursuing court cases against the oil companies that polluted their forests, water and damaged their health, but so far without remedy. There are hundreds, thousands of cases in which local communities all over the world have similarly tried in vain to get justice.
In 2014, some countries introduced a resolution at the Human Rights Council. The resolution (A/HRC/RES/26/9) was adopted by the Council in June, with the decision to establish a working group on a legally binding instrument on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights. As indicated by its name, the working group has the mandate to establish a binding treaty or other binding instrument.
The first meeting of this working group was held in July 2015 in Geneva. The resolution had directed that the group’s first two sessions be dedicated to conducting constructive deliberations on the content, scope, nature, and form of the future international instrument.
It also recommended that the first meeting serve to collect inputs from States and relevant stakeholders on possible principles, scope and elements of such an international legally binding instrument.
This issue of South Bulletin carries several reports on the first meeting of the working group. These include an overview report of the meeting (including the opening session); the sessions on scope of application of the instrument; the obligations of states and businesses; standards for legal liability and building mechanisms for access to remedy. The opening speech of the Chairperson of the working group (Ambassador María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés of Ecuador) and the very good keynote address by the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Victoria Tauli-Corpuz) are also published for the record.
The reports provide summaries of the manifold views of international and national experts, government delegations, international organisations, civil society organisations, on the wide range of issues linked to the issue of TNCs and human rights and to the working group.
We hope you find this a valuable record of these issues and views and of the first session of the working group.