Monday, January 26, 2026

From 20–24 October 2025, Member States, civil society, and affected communities convened in Geneva for the 11th IGWG session negotiating the UN treaty on business and human rights (the Legally Binding Instrument). After more than a decade of negotiations, the Chair signaled a critical turning point, announcing an intention to finalize the treaty within two years—making the intersessional period decisive for corporate accountability and for ensuring the primacy of the human rights of peoples and nature over shareholders’ profits.

Human rights advocates participate in the negotiations of a Legally Binding Treaty in Geneva.

What moved forward in the UN binding treaty negotiations

Under the chairpersonship of H.E. Marcelo Vázquez Bermúdez (Ecuador), Member States advanced article-by-article negotiations on Articles 12–24 of the draft treaty and held interactive discussions on the Chair’s 13 proposed reformulations of Articles 4–11. Participation was broad—over 70 Member States, regional bodies, national human rights institutions, and civil society organizations/networks took part—reflecting continued commitment to the mandate of the Human Rights Council Resolution 26/9.

A 2026 Roadmap for the UN treaty negotiations was presented, including three intersessional thematic consultations ahead of the 12th IGWG session (October 2026). The first intersessional will focus on Articles 12–24; subsequent consultations may revisit earlier provisions, including the preamble and Articles 1–3. Written submissions on the Chair’s reformulations are due by 1 February 2026, making this a key advocacy moment for Member States and civil society.

As Marta Ribera (Observatori DESCA and ESCR-Net) observed, the session saw new engagement from several Global South countries, while also revealing renewed, coordinated opposition from some Gulf countries on gender and sexual diversity protections—underscoring both opportunity and risk in this phase of the UN treaty process.

Throughout the week, civil society repeatedly grounded the negotiations in lived realities. As Grace Tepula (Rural Women Assembly, Zambia) stated in the joint civil society closing statement:

“Affected communities from across the world here this week have suffered the consequences of corporate impunity, and the perpetrators remain the same: transnational corporations.”

Negotiation dynamics: convergence and pressure on corporate accountability

Throughout the session, civil society consistently pressed for a people-centred, human rights-based UN treaty on business and human rights—not one diluted by corporate profit logic. Key demands reiterated across interventions included:

Extraterritorial jurisdiction and forum necessitatis to ensure access to justice;
Joint and several liability across global value chains;
Robust civil, criminal, and administrative liability mechanisms;
Strong safeguards and regulations against corporate capture and undue influence in policymaking;
The primacy of human rights over trade, investment, and profit.

Civil society also pushed back against attempts by corporate representatives to weaken the treaty’s jurisdictional standards. In an intervention on Article 9, Alreem Kamal, speaking on behalf of ESCR-Net and the Syrian Legal Development Programme (SLDP), rejected claims by the corporate sector that expanded jurisdiction would undermine international law:

“Access to the most protective forum is not abuse—it is justice. The updated Article 9 bases jurisdiction on clear, accepted links. These are not ‘exorbitant’, but essential to close gaps in access to remedy.”

She further underscored that corporate objections to extraterritorial and universal jurisdiction are aimed at shielding companies from accountability, stressing that:

“The treaty cannot be limited in jurisdiction or liability, as this would contradict the very purpose of why we are here today.”

Alreem also warned that persistent attempts to derail or rewrite core provisions reflect a deeper problem of conflict of interest, reinforcing civil society’s call to protect the treaty process from corporate capture.

While several member States aligned with these principles, corporate lobbyists continued to push in the opposite direction—calling for the redrafting or deletion of key provisions and promoting voluntary approaches rooted in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). Civil society rejected these efforts, warning against turning the treaty into another vehicle for greenwashing or legal evasion.

ESCR-Net and allied engagement at the 11th IGWG session

Civil society presence was strong and diverse, with feminist, youth, labour, and Global South peoples’ movements at the centre of the UN treaty negotiations. ESCR-Net worked closely with Feminists for a Binding Treaty (F4BT), the Global Campaign to Dismantle Corporate Power, and Treaty Alliance partners, delivering joint opening and closing statements and co-hosting a widely attended side event on stopping corporate capture and corporate impunity.

In its opening intervention, ESCR-Net underscored that corporate actors continue to interfere in policy-making while those demanding accountability are silenced—and called on Member States, particularly from the Global South, to stand firm against loopholes, voluntary codes, and impunity. Closing statements reinforced urgent priorities: reinserting the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment; embedding gender-responsive and intersectional approaches; and anchoring the treaty in the universal application of law.

Participants from affected communities particularly from the Global South, also stressed that corporate harms are not abstract or isolated, but deeply embedded in global systems of violence, extraction, and repression. In the second joint closing statement, Hay Sha Wiya, speaking on behalf of the same broad civil society coalition, warned:

“Across the world, we are witnessing the deadly consequences of unregulated corporate power.”

She pointed explicitly to Gaza, where corporate material, financial, and technological support to the military-industrial complex continues to fuel occupation, apartheid, and genocide—making corporate complicity impossible to ignore. These realities directly reflect the red lines identified by ESCR-Net and allied movements throughout the process: no treaty that tolerates corporate capture, shields corporate actors from liability, or subordinates human and environmental rights to profit can deliver justice or meet the mandate of Resolution 26/9.

This collective engagement extended beyond the negotiations. On 20 October 2025, ESCR-Net co-organized the side event “Holding corporations to account: State, Parliamentarian, and civil-society initiatives to stop impunity and complicity”, bringing together Member States, parliamentarians, and civil society to confront corporate impunity across contexts of human rights violations, climate injustice, and genocide.

During the event, ESCR-Net highlighted corporate complicity in the genocide in Gaza, drawing connections between militarization, climate harm, and corporate profit, and underscored concrete strategies to engage States in ending corporate complicity. These included initiatives such as the Global Energy Embargo for Palestine, the Binding Treaty process, and climate negotiations.

These interventions echoed ESCR-Net’s statement at the side event, reaffirming that only binding rules—not voluntary approaches—can guarantee human rights and climate justice.

What remains contested in the UN treaty process

Despite progress in negotiations, major debates persist in the negotiations on the UN treaty on business and human rights:

Scope (transnational corporations versus all business enterprises);
Liability and jurisdiction, including piercing the corporate veil;
The balance between State sovereignty and binding international obligations;

Explicit protections against corporate influence in both UN processes and national law-making.

Outcomes and next steps for the UN binding treaty

The session adopted the Chair-Rapporteur’s recommendations ad referendum, including:

Publishing all textual proposals and statements on the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) website;
Inviting written submissions to both States and non-State stakeholdersby 1 February 2026 on the Chair’s reformulations;
Continuing the Friends of the Chair mechanism to build cross-regional convergence;
Implementing the 2026 Roadmap toward substantive negotiations at the 12th IGWG session (19–23 October 2026).

Why the next 18 months matter for corporate accountability

The 11th IGWG session confirmed that the UN treaty on business and human rights has entered its final, politically decisive phase. The coming intersessionals will shape the next draft and determine whether the LBI reflects the aspirations of affected peoples and their communities —or is weakened by colonial corporate agenda. Now is the time to put more energy into this process, particularly on scope, definitions, and liability grounded in the principles of human rights and justice.

After eleven sessions, the horizon is clear: a treaty capable of ending corporate impunity, stopping corporate capture, and guaranteeing justice and remedy. Delivering it will require sustained political will from Member States—and unwavering pressure from civil society to ensure this instrument truly belongs to those it is meant to protect.

UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights: What the 11th Session Delivered and What Comes Next