"Ecofeminist perspectives: towards a UN treaty on business and human rights", 27 January 2025

...Many transnational companies, and firms that source inputs to their products internationally, rely on the exploitation of people and the planet…  

Women are major contributors to supply chains, sometimes comprising up to 80 or 90% of workers. 2.3 million women and men die from work-related ailments every year, with even larger numbers injured at work...

An agreement that – ideally – all countries and all companies comply with could fundamentally overcome income poverty, child labour, gender gaps in employment and wages, and create dignified and healthy production and consumption environments…

In 2014, the countries from the global south, led by Ecuador and South Africa, therefore launched a new effort for binding regulation…

Since 2014, there have been annual negotiations…74  countries plus the EU and almost 50 progressive  CSOs participated at the 10th session in December, 2024. They made some progress on discussing the specific content of the Treaty’s draft. A number of governments representatives and civil society organisations insisted on gender-just language, on carefully refining the concept of ‘’victims’’, and the reinstatement of climate justice as a goal, which the previous chair had deleted from an earlier draft. The Human Rights Council has mobilised funding for intersessional meetings from April 2025 to advance these discussions.

Currently, we are seeing a gain in momentum on the issue.  

Brazil, Mexico,  and India, for example, are strengthening their business and human rights legislation. Germany, France, the EU adopted due diligence laws, and the UK and Australia have in place modern slavery prohibition acts….