Resolution of Human Rights Council on Business and Human Rights fails victims of transnationals

FIAN International believes that Ruggie’s guidance fails to provide adequate binding mechanisms that hold transnational corporations (TNCs) accountable for abuses of human rights.
 
Civil society organizations, including FIAN, have identified hundreds of cases that expose gaps in human rights protection under the current international and national frameworks that rely on voluntary regulation and self-defined responsibilities to redress abuses.

Urgent and well-known cases have been discussed in the UN human rights system for many decades and standards have been developed by treaty bodies and other experts. FIAN believes that these standards should remain the basis of further progress towards closing the gaps in human rights protection.

Ruggie‘s recommendations rely largely on voluntary mechanisms – an approach that has failed. FIAN recommends the new working group apply different international human rights sources in a systematic manner to guarantee real progress towards closing the gaps in legal human rights protection.

Each interpretation of existing human rights standards has to guarantee the highest possible protection to the victims of human rights abuses by transnational companies.  

FIAN asserts that the approach taken by the Special Representative was flawed in assuming that promotion of human rights is akin to striking a political deal between different stakeholders.

“Human rights are clearly pro-victim, are based on principles of law and know only one aim – to prevent violations and abuses, and to provide remedy to the victims”, says Rolf Künnemann, Human Rights Director at FIAN International. 

“States, individually and in international cooperation, have the obligation to regulate transnational corporations in this respect, and to dismantle them if necessary. The opinion of TNCs on these matters is foreseeable and largely irrelevant in view of the states’ obligations and the rights of the victims. What matters is the experience of victims and human rights defenders.” 

FIAN also disputes Ruggie’s claims that the Guiding Principles were widely agreed upon in consultation “with all stakeholders”. The major recommendations of leading human rights organizations were ignored in the consultation process.

In January critiques of the Guiding Principles provided by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), FIAN and others were dismissed publicly by the Special Representative in a letter in The Financial Times.

“Such attacks on human rights organizations have not been a feature of the UN human rights system since the end of the Cold War and they should not be permitted to occur today”, says Künnemann. “In the Council itself the hostile atmosphere made serious questioning very difficult for a number of states.”

FIAN advises the Human Rights Council to “avoid being distracted” by the promotion of various voluntary mechanisms by corporate public relations. Instead it should address the key issue – how to stop impunity and provide legal remedy for human rights abuses by transnational corporations.