Ms Mary Lawlor:

I do not have much else to add except that looking at the three pillars of the UN guiding principles on business and human rights, the first principle is the government's obligation to protect human rights. The second is the company's obligation to respect human rights, and the third is remedy. When we are talking about civil liability and retaliation and all of that, there should be a clear pathway for those who are opposing something for human rights reasons to be able to do so without fear of retaliation. In my work, I am constantly engaging with human rights defenders in the context of business and human rights. The youngest human rights defender to be killed was a 14-year-old child in Colombia, in the context of the environment. The oldest that I have come across and spoken about is a 65-year-old grandmother in South Africa, opposing the extension of open-pit mining beside a nature reserve, who was killed in front of her grandson. That is what it comes down to. That is what we are talking about. That is why the directive is so important.