Alice Bulteau - FIDH
In attendance at the United Nations Office in Geneva, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and 19 of its member and partner organisations delivered a general statement to reiterate the need for an ambitious United Nations (UN) Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights that can effectively strengthen protections of human rights from corporate abuses. Read the statement below.
Geneva, 12 October 2026. Thank you, Mister Chair.
Congratulations on your appointment as Chair of the Working Group. I deliver this statement on behalf of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and 19 of its member organisations and partners.
FIDH welcomes the progress made throughout the year by the Working Group and the legal experts to clarify key provisions and improve the draft text. In the context of deregulating trends at various levels, we must accelerate our efforts to fill in the protection gaps for victims of corporate harms.
Over the last twelve months, we have seen the sustained rush towards critical minerals pose serious threats to the rights of Indigenous Peoples, rural communities, human rights defenders, civil society and the environment. We keep witnessing the persisting business support to armed conflicts, genocides, illegal occupation, and civil wars. We have also grown increasingly concerned about the unregulated development of AI and tech companies, and its negative impacts on the rights to information, privacy, and freedom of expression. The real cost of low ambition for this Legally Binding Instrument is human rights abuses.
As we move towards a new draft, the Working Group must thus ensure the text remains ambitious. FIDH particularly welcomes the Chair’s proposals that make the text clearer, extend the scope of protection, and guarantee effective safeguards from corporate power. We regret, however, the absence of clear references to enhanced due diligence and the respect of international humanitarian law by business enterprises - despite being a well-established concept and an international normative framework in contexts of conflict-affected and high-risk areas.
We thus encourage States to pursue their constructive engagement during this session, and we remain committed to provide our detailed comments throughout the week.
Thank you.
