The latest drafting moves around the UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights show how difficult it remains for the United Nation system to turn broad political commitments on corporate responsibility into a concrete, enforceable legal instrument.
In Geneva on 30 January 2026, new textual suggestions issued by Ecuador as Chair‑Rapporteur of the Open‑Ended Intergovernmental Working Group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises (OEIGWG) triggered cautious approval but also renewed fears that the treaty could be emptied of its transformative potential. This moment crystallises a decade‑long struggle, since the OEIGWG was created in 2014, to design rules that hold corporations legally accountable for human rights abuses and violations without being neutralised by diplomatic compromise.
From the outset, the working group’s mandate has been ambitious: elaborate an international treaty capable of tackling abuses along increasingly transnational supply chains, where victims often fall through the cracks of domestic legal systems.
The new text, and the responses it has generated, reveal how far the negotiations have come in refining language, yet how far they still have to go in confronting entrenched power imbalances that shape which rights are fully guaranteed and which remain aspirational. Any serious analysis of this phase must therefore consider both the technical drafting choices and the structural political pressures acting on them.
Clarifications that fall short of a victim‑centred approach
The new suggestions introduced by Ecuador provide some welcome clarifications compared to previous drafts, helping to streamline certain obligations and refine the architecture of the prospective treaty. In particular, they aim to tidy up areas where earlier language was seen as confusing or overly broad, in order to make the future instrument more workable for implementation within diverse legal traditions. It is in this sense that the accompanying commentary notes that
“FIDH generally supports several of the new clarifications”
(FIDH), recognising that not every revision undermines the project.
Yet these clarifications coexist with significant omissions and weaknesses, especially in provisions that should anchor a genuinely victim‑centred treaty. The same comment immediately adds that it
“regrets – among other things – their failure to adequately address the rights of victims to access to information, consultation, and Free, Prior and Informed Consent, particularly when trying to prevent human rights abuses and violations.”
(FIDH) That regret points to a deeper problem: the draft continues to treat communities as objects of protection rather than as rights‑holders with agency to shape whether and how high‑risk projects go ahead. Rights to information, consultation and Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) are crucial precisely at the preventive stage, before harm occurs; leaving them under‑developed in the text undercuts the Treaty’s ability to tackle abuses at their root.
In practice, this means that even if the UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights eventually codifies corporate due‑diligence obligations, affected communities may still find themselves excluded from key decisions if the provisions on participation remain weak.
The analysis of this drafting choice suggests a tension between a state‑centric vision of regulation, where authorities manage risk on behalf of citizens, and a rights‑based vision, where communities exercise direct control over decisions that threaten their lands, livelihoods and cultures. The current language appears to lean toward the former, leaving persistent gaps that future negotiations will have to address if the treaty is to live up to its promise.
Domestic legal deference and the risk of a hollow treaty
The most controversial thread running through the new text is its repeated insistence on aligning treaty obligations with national frameworks. The commentary highlights that
“the text also persists in referring to the need for consistency with ‘domestic legal principles’ or ‘domestic legal and administrative systems’.”
(FIDH) On a superficial reading, this may seem like a standard clause of respect for state sovereignty. In the context of corporate accountability, however, such repetition carries substantial legal and political weight: it can operate as a safety valve through which substantive obligations are diluted or delayed indefinitely.
The warning continues with a stark assessment: these references
“could restrict or block provisions aimed at removing barriers to access to justice, therefore defeating the very purpose of an international treaty like this.”
(FIDH) Access to justice is precisely where existing domestic systems often fail victims of transnational corporate abuse, whether through restrictive standing rules, short limitation periods, prohibitive costs or lack of judicial independence. If all meaningful innovations the treaty might introduce—such as broadened jurisdictional options, eased evidentiary burdens, or explicit avenues for cross‑border claims—are subordinated to an obligation not to disturb domestic legal principles, the instrument risks codifying the status quo rather than transforming it.
Seen from this angle, the insistence on domestic consistency runs counter to the core rationale for negotiating a UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights at the United Nation level in the first place. The entire project was launched because fragmented national approaches had proven incapable of delivering predictable accountability in complex global chains, especially where powerful economic interests are at stake. An analysis that takes this history seriously must therefore ask whether the current wording still expresses a shared commitment to overcome structural obstacles, or whether it reflects a re‑emergence of defensive state positions that treat international law as a ceiling rather than a floor for corporate regulation.
A decade of negotiations at a crossroads
The OEIGWG’s evolution since 2014 offers important context for understanding why the present moment feels so pivotal. Over the years, drafts have progressively elaborated concepts like human rights due diligence, clarified the range of business enterprises covered, and explored various models for jurisdiction, liability and cooperation. Alongside these textual developments, a rich body of civil‑society input has emerged, including
“FIDH’s contributions to the UN Treaty negotiations over the years”
and its
“analysis and recommendations for the Updated Treaty Draft from 2024.”
(FIDH) These iterative exchanges between states and experts have helped identify where consensus is consolidating and where deep disagreement persists.
Within that trajectory, the Ecuadorian suggestions can be read as an attempt to move the process out of an impasse by simplifying language and seeking formulations that more states can live with. But this strategy carries evident risks. If simplification means collapsing ambitious proposals into vague commitments framed by domestic‑law caveats, the negotiations may indeed advance procedurally while regressing substantively. The current analysis shows precisely this dual movement: some issues become clearer on paper even as critical guarantees for victims become more elusive.
The reference in the resources section to earlier
“analysis and recommendations for the Updated Treaty Draft from 2024”
(FIDH) underscores that unresolved concerns—around participation, extraterritorial obligations, and robust enforcement—have accompanied the process for several negotiation cycles. That continuity makes it harder to dismiss present criticisms as impatience; they instead appear as a cumulative verdict that incremental tweaks have not yet altered the structural imbalance between corporate power and community rights that initially motivated the treaty initiative.
What this moment reveals about global corporate accountability
Taken together, the new Ecuador text and the reactions it has sparked offer a revealing snapshot of the current state of global debates on business and human rights at the United Nation. On one hand, there is now wide rhetorical acceptance that corporations must respect human rights and that states should regulate them accordingly; the existence of an OEIGWG and successive treaty drafts signals a political recognition that voluntary initiatives are insufficient.
On the other hand, the fine print of the proposed treaty still hesitates to disturb entrenched legal hierarchies and economic interests, particularly when it comes to empowering victims with enforceable rights across borders.
The commentary’s stark warning that domestic‑law deference may end up
“defeating the very purpose of an international treaty like this”
(FIDH) encapsulates that contradiction. A treaty that aspires to remove barriers to justice cannot, at the same time, lock itself into the very systems that maintain those barriers. An analysis attentive to victims’ experiences therefore reads the Ecuador draft as a test: whether states will accept the implications of their own commitments or seek to contain them within comfortable procedural boundaries.
In this sense, the present controversy over language on domestic legal principles, access to information and FPIC is more than a technical dispute; it is a struggle over what kind of international legal order will emerge around corporate conduct. If the final UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights retains strong, unambiguous obligations that expand space for communities to seek justice, it could mark a significant step towards rebalancing power in the global economy.
If, instead, compromise language prevails that systematically subordinates victims’ rights to domestic constraints, the treaty risks becoming a symbol of ambition checked at the threshold of real accountability—a missed opportunity that future generations of advocates will have to revisit.
