In the backdrop of Paris Agreement's failure to address climate crisis due to resistance from. Commercial czars, the 10th session of the historic negotiations to regulate transnational corporations and other enterprises are underway in Geneva, Switzerland, at the Human Rights Council (HRC) of the United Nations (UN). The negotiations have the mandate to make the TNCs subservient to a legally binding treaty on human rights. The agenda of work of the 10th session and road map of the UN's open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights and the text oto the dated draft legally binding instrument with the textual proposals submitted by States during the ninth session is being pursued.
The session was initially scheduled for October 2024 but it was suddenly rescheduled to December unmindful of the limitations of the participants from the Global South.
Human Rights Council Procedural Decision A/HCR/56/116 was adopted in July 2024 to provide additional resources for the UN process.
Notably, the UN Resolution 26/9 which initiated the UN process in 2014 gave a mandate to regulate the activities of TNCs and other international business enterprises. It has come to light that during the last two UN sessions the government of Ecuador, the Chair of the UN process has sided with corporate interests and Global North countries. It is hoped that Daniel Noboa led government of Ecuador will refrain from siding with Global North countries. Brazilian daily Folha de S.Paulo revealed in October 2023 that Noboa is the owner of two offshore companies located in Panama, according to the Panama Papers. He is reportedly linked to companies owned by his father in tax havens.
Post Rafael Correa regime in Ecuador started behaving strangely in order to procure loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It revoked Julian Assange's asylum on 11 April 2019 following which he was arrested for failing to appear in court, and carried out of the embassy by members of the London Metropolitan Police. In October 2019, Lenín Moreno led government faced a series of bitter protests from the people of Ecuador. His successor Guillermo Lasso faced two impeachment proceeding, dissolved the National Assembly and did not run for election in 2023.
Ecuador government's docile and gullible role was on display in Ottawa. The intergovernmental committee tasked by the UN Environment Assembly to conclude plastic pollution treaty is chaired by Ambassador Luis Vayas of Ecuador. The chair decided to suspend the meeting in Ottawa. The chair allowed the USA and Saudi Arabia to seize control of the negotiation like the committee’s catastrophic session in Paris. USA, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Switzerland support the chair because an alternative proposal echoed the proposition of the USA. The revised draft text that had been prepared in Nairobi in November 2023 was undermined. UN Environment Assembly had adopted the plastics treaty negotiation mandate in March 2022. The third session had prepared a 31 page long zero draft text of the international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment in Nairobi. The 77 page Ottawa text came up for negotiation at the fifth session of the intergovernmental negotiating committee in Busan, South Korea during November 25-December 1 2024 but failed to finalize the text of the treaty and ended with 22 page long chair's text. The role of the chair from Ecuador has been undermined as well.
In such a backdrop, during the negotiations on the legally binding treaty on human rights, Global South countries like China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, Palestine, Kenya, Egypt, South Africa, Cuba, Honduras and others are stressing the focus on TNCs. The International Chamber of Commerce, the International Organisation of Employers and the US Council for International Business who are defenders of the interest of TNCs have engineered their way into the negotiations to influence the outcome of this UN process.
Some of these TNCs which are complicit in genocide, mass displacement, famine, and the destruction of land and nature want corporate impunity to prevail. The Binding Treaty process ought to inspire national legal systems and vice versa.
The Global Campaign to Reclaim Peoples’ Sovereignty, Dismantle Corporate Power and Stop Impunity brought the voices of the communities and social movements affected by corporate crime in the face of corporate lobbies.
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