Much of the current global and environmental crisis is driven by unrestrained corporate extraction and economic models that prioritise profit over environmental protection and human rights. Exacerbated by a number of ‘forever wars’, corporations tied to the military industrial complex and fossil fuel reap profits while contributing to environmental destruction, particularly in contexts of conflict and occupation.
Front line human rights defenders, communities and civil society organisations directly facing the consequences have repeatedly warned of the consequences of inaction in response to converging crises, as echoed and uplifted by recent landmark decisions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The ICJ, for example, addressed States’ duty to require companies to carry out human rights and environmental due diligence in their operations, explicitly recognising the ways in which the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment (RtHE) is adversely impacted by business operations and activities and underscoring that States are engaging in internationally wrongful acts when failing to protect against emissions, including by not regulating private actors.
Despite these developments, corporations remain among the principal drivers of environmental destruction, and significant gaps persist between normative recognition and enforceable regulation of corporate conduct. Recent deregulatory developments, including attempts to weaken human rights and environmental safeguards in regulatory instruments, the weakening of environmental institutions in Latin America and regressive environmental legislation, underscore the risk that political compromise and corporate influence can dilute environmental obligations and entrench weak compliance approaches that perpetuate corporate impunity.
Making defenders, Indigenous Peoples and communities at the centre of the LBI
ISHR, in partnership with other organisations, voiced support for language that ensures that the scope of this treaty prioritises and provides the strongest protection to both people and the planet over corporate interests.
This would include the urgent need to provide comprehensive, enforceable protection for human rights defenders, Indigenous Peoples, and people working in rural areas and other affected communities, who are at the front line of resisting corporate abuses while simultaneously witnessing systematic repression. Accordingly, it must recognise the right to defend rights and the obligation of businesses to continually assess, address and mitigate risks to human rights defenders and to meaningfully include them in consultations related to business operations. This would also include access to information and evidence in criminal, civil and administrative proceedings where mutual legal assistance would be needed to operationalise the articles on access to justice.
The delivery of victim-centred reparations should be based on consultations with victims, and States should guarantee that anyone cooperating in this process is protected from intimidations and reprisals, including human rights defenders.
Furthermore, the Preamble of the LBI should expressly mention the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.
Make the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment part of the material scope of the LBI
This year will mark five years since the Human Rights Council recognised the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and one year after the delivery of two landmark advisory opinions on climate change by the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In particular, the ICJ addressed how the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment can be adversely impacted by business operations and activities and underscored that States are engaging in internationally wrongful acts when failing to protect against emissions, including by not regulating private actors. These developments necessitate explicitly embedding the right to a healthy environment within the LBI. Despite this, environmental language was removed entirely from the latest updated draft. The extraction of these elements from the text substantially weakens the instrument overall and its potential to achieve meaningful progress in the pursuit of accountability for corporate-driven disruption of the enjoyment of human rights, all of which are implicated in RtHE.
Human rights and RtHE are interdependent, the latter being a precondition to the enjoyment of all other rights. Though they are interrelated, a comprehensive instrument will be contextually incomplete and practically ineffective if it fails to explicitly recognise businesses’ due diligence obligations towards both human rights and the environment. In such circumstances, profit will continue being prioritised over people, rendering a just transition beyond our collective reach.
In debating the scope of the instrument, states diverged along lines of naming all businesses, including transnational corporations (TNCs) and business enterprises involved in activities of a transnational character, or exclusively TNCs. Tensions regarding this language reflect varying desires as to the binding nature of the legally binding instrument. Other States insisted on broad language towards the goal of ensuring the treaty is not subject to strategically narrow interpretations, whereby States and corporations may avoid accountability by weaponising legal loopholes or diverting responsibility to sub-contractors and domestic corporations.
ISHR proposed in the sessions that the updated draft, specifically Article 3.3 concerning scope, necessarily be reframed to cover international environmental law as suggested by the legal experts. Moreover, we affirmed that an instrument that aims to regulate business activities will not achieve its goal if it does not expressly include the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as part of its material scope.
Engaging constructively in the LBI process is crucial for member States and the preservation of people and the planet. A comprehensive LBI will meet the situation of continued erosion of the landscapes we all depend on to survive with material pathways for States to fulfil their evolving, interrelated obligations to protect human rights and the environment, and advance accountability and confront corporate impunity.
The third inter-sessional meeting will take place on the 28 to 29 May 2026 looking at article 1, preamble and a general overview of the text.
