The open-ended working group (OEIGW) on transnational corporations (TNCs) and other business enterprises with respect to human rights successfully held its second meeting in October 2016, in Geneva. The OEIGW was established by a Human Rights Council resolution adopted in July 2014. According to this resolution, the next meeting of the OEIGW, expected in October 2017, will see the Chairperson rapporteur “prepare elements for the draft legally binding instrument [on TNCs and other business enterprises with respect to human rights] for substantive negotiations” (hereinafter referred to as “the Instrument” or “binding Instrument”).

The global unemployment rate is expected to rise modestly to 5.8 per cent in 2017, representing an increase in the number of unemployed globally of 3.4 million compared with 2016, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has said.

In its World Employment and Social Outlook - Trends 2017 report released recently, the ILO said that this will bring total unemployment to 201.1 million in 2017.

The ILO further said that the global unemployment rate is then expected to hold relatively steady in 2018, as the economic outlook improves, although the pace of labour force growth will still outstrip employment creation, resulting in an additional 2.7 million unemployed people.

This year, our organization, Inclusive Development International, launched the Follow the Money initiative – a new tool to fight land grabs and other corporate abuses.  It’s a simple idea, but we believe it has the potential to be a game-changer.

Every year, more than 15 million people are forcibly displaced from their land, housing and the natural resources they depend upon to make way for large-scale agro-industrial plantations, hydropower dams, mines and power plants. Rarely are they compensated for what they have lost. 

In various remarks in the last few days, Argentine government officials have insisted upon blaming foreign-born people for drug trafficking in our country. Security Minister Patricia Bullrich used skewed and decontextualized statistics and stigmatizing assertions to try to justify a toughening of the nation’s immigration policy, which the government has been announcing for several weeks.

In an unprecedented and historic move, the Sixth Committee of the UN General Assembly recently granted observer status to the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). The resolution was submitted by France, Albania, Colombia, the Netherlands and Tunisia and was adopted during the seventy-first session of the General Assembly. The resolution sets out the ICC’s position as observer in the General Assembly from 1 January 2017 on.