UN Treaty

Reporting
- Business enterprises must identify, assess and publish any actual or potential human rights abuse from their own operations or business relationships
- Must publish regular human rights, labor rights, environmental and climate change impact assessments throughout their operations
- Periodic reports on non-financial matters
Due Diligence
- States parties must require business enterprises to undertake human rights due diligence, proportionate to their size, risk of human rights abuse or the nature and context of their business activities
- Includes measures to avoid, prevent and mitigate actual or potential human rights abuses; monitor the effectiveness of measures taken; and, communicate with stakeholders
- Includes meaningful consultation with potentially affected individuals and communities, as well as respecting the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous peoples
Other
- Obligations for mutual legal assistance and international judicial cooperation
- Establishment of an international fund for victims

Human Rights
- Covers all human rights abuses, defined as any direct or indirect harm in the context of business activities
- Covers all internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms including ILO conventions- if the state is party to them
- Includes customary international law
Environment
- Covers the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
Other Social Matters
Broad ranging

Own Operations
Subsidiaries
Direct Suppliers
Indirect Suppliers
- Covers ‘business relationships’ defined as any relationship between natural or legal persons to conduct business
- Article 1.5 explicitly mentions suppliers, but does not clarify whether indirect suppliers are covered by the treaty
Full Value Chain

Large Companies
SMEs
- Covers all business activities, including of a transnational character, but states parties may impose obligations commensurate to the business’s size, sector, operational context or severity of the impacts on human rights
All sectors

Monitoring
- A Committee shall be established to which states parties must submit reports on the measures they have taken to comply with their obligations
- The Committee has the power to make general comments and normative recommendations, provide concluding observations, and submit and annual report to the states-parties and the United Nations General Assembly
Administrative Sanctions
- States parties must adopt legal and other measures necessary to ensure that their domestic jurisdiction provides for proportionate criminal, civil and/or administrative sanctions (Article 8.3)

Civil Liability
- Article 7 and 8 ensures victims’ access to remedy and legal liability of non-complying natural or legal persons
Facilitating Access to Justice
- Art. 4.2(c) guarantees the right to a fair, adequate, prompt, non-discriminatory, appropriate and gender-sensitive access to justice, individual or collective reparation
- Article 9.3 obliges courts vested with jurisdiction to avoid imposing legal obstacles including the doctrine of forum non conveniens