Dr. Chris O'Connell:

Yes, absolutely. I thank the Cathaoirleach.

They scored 30% or less on their human rights policies when matched against the UNGPs.

While some countries have responded to this situation by introducing national legislation that imposes reporting or due diligence requirements on companies - this includes France and Germany, but Colombia and Mexico are also working on laws – the issue is that these laws are limited in scope or focus. Even regional laws, like the EU’s corporate sustainability due diligence directive, CSDDD - if they impose diverging standards for companies - can lead to an uneven patchwork of rules worldwide that make the situation more complex and unequal for affected people and companies, create loopholes for companies to escape responsibility, create regulatory uncertainty and incentivise investment in countries with lower protection standards.

Then we come to the case of the EU, which in 2024 passed its new CSDDD law, which I already mentioned, that requires the largest EU companies to undertake due diligence checks throughout their value chains on human rights and environmental impacts. This regional law represented a significant step towards justice and accountability. It was believed that it would lead to the EU formally bringing this experience and expertise to the negotiations on the binding treaty. Since then, however, the EU has bowed to corporate lobbying and geopolitical pressure and reversed course. Under the guise of simplification, the European Commission has instituted a full-scale rollback of corporate accountability frameworks. The general approach agreed by the Council and the European Parliament’s JURI committee report signal an intention to transform the CSDDD from a substantive regulatory tool into a paperwork-oriented tick-box exercise.

These EU developments have serious ramifications for the treaty process and the EU, including weakening the EU's credibility, as if it backtracks on due diligence and liability, its role in Geneva negotiations will diminish; encouraging a race to the bottom, as other states may follow the EU’s lead in diluting corporate accountability rules; and undermining synergy between regimes, as the treaty risks being forced to compensate for EU gaps, instead of building on strong regional standards. These developments at the EU serve to emphasise the importance of the UN treaty process.

The normative gaps that the UN Human Rights Council, HRC, Resolution 26/9 of 2014, which established the working group and the ongoing treaty process, was set up to address remain a problem. After 11 years, we have arrived at a promising draft treaty text which begins to address many of the key elements necessary to close those normative gaps, such as provisions to ensure access to justice and remedy for victims, including a duty to remove barriers to justice; protection of environmental and human rights defenders; duties placed on states to investigate, create effective regulatory authorities, and impose on companies duties to respect human rights, prevent abuses, and conduct effective human rights and environmental due diligence; and provisions on state co-operation and mutual legal assistance when cases cross borders.

Nevertheless, there are key areas of the text that need to be strengthened, among them protection of the procedural rights of individuals and communities, particularly indigenous peoples, to be consulted, access relevant information and be protected from imminent harm; rules on corporate liability, such as liability causing or contributing to human rights violations and abuses, including for parent companies; rules on jurisdiction to make sure victims of corporate abuse have an accessible venue to hear their claims; more gender-responsive language, particularly in due diligence provisions; and enhanced due diligence duties in conflict-affected areas. This last was highlighted by the recent report of Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese which detailed at least 1,000 corporate entities profiting from occupation and genocide in Palestine.

To conclude, I will emphasise two key points. The treaty process has momentum, a road map and supports it has never enjoyed before. As a result, the likelihood of having a treaty in some form has never been higher. The addition of a panel of international legal experts, the convoking of inter-sessional thematic dialogues, and a plan to conclude the process in 2027 are all highly positive developments. Dismissing this process, as some EU member states have done in the past, is even less appropriate now.

Nevertheless, when it comes to getting an effective treaty, we are at a real inflection point. As noted in the briefing paper, for many workers, civil society organisations, politicians and businesspeople, the catalyst for the push toward binding regulation of corporate behaviour came on 24 April 2013 with the collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh when around 1,138 workers needlessly lost their lives in pursuit of profits for multinational corporations. We thought we had come a long way since then. Instead we find ourselves back in a context where political and business leaders are talking blithely about cutting red tape and simplification, like they are simple efficiencies and will not come at a huge cost to workers, indigenous peoples and the planet. That is not credible policymaking. Deregulation profits the powerful at the cost of the vulnerable; it always has and always will.

This new thinking presents a clear and real danger to the treaty process, with a number of rich states and the corporate lobby pushing back on many critical provisions and questioning why certain norms and legal devices, which have now been amply proven to represent barriers to justice and accountability, should be altered at all. We can see what is happening in the EU to its own flagship due diligence law. This thinking risks detracting from the very spirit and driving force that motivated the treaty process a decade ago, and it is magical thinking. The issues that brought about the post-Rana Plaza consensus - threats and attacks against workers and communities, environmental and climate harms, legal uncertainty for victims and companies - have not disappeared. If anything, they have worsened.

We need UN member states and politicians, those who profess to care about people and the planet, to seize this crucial opportunity to act now to back up their discourse and actively champion a binding UN treaty. Ireland has failed to do this up to now, but with the EU abandoning any moral leadership, it is time for us to send a clear message to the global south, human rights defenders like those with us today, and all right-thinking people that human rights matter and that we will defend them.