Ecofeminist perspectives: towards a UN treaty on business and human rights
Author: Gabriele Koehler
Business & Human Rights: Why it matters.
As ecofeminists, we demand system change. But what does that actually mean? For one, if we are serious about system change, we cannot skirt around the issue of hyperglobalisation.
Let me explain what hyperglobalisation is:
Many transnational companies, and firms that source inputs to their products internationally, rely on the exploitation of people and the planet. This is because of intense competition among countries and companies AND because governments are either unable or unwilling to enforce regulations – a result of decades of neoliberal ideology and unchecked corporate power.
The result? An unfettered global economy with enormous and ever-growing inequities, whereby global value chains (GVCS, also called supply chains) disregard human rights, fair labour standards, women and children’s rights, as well as climate and biodiversity agreements. Powerful companies, often with well-known brand names, push their suppliers to cut costs and violate standards, and each firm in the chain passes on that pressure to the next lower supplier.

GVCs provide raw materials such as: fruit or vegetables and seafood products harvested for export or further processing. GCVs produce the rare minerals that go into consumer products such as mobile phones and car batteries. The textiles industry, including fast fashion, forms a major GVC, with components sourced from the lowest-cost locations.
From the textile factory disasters in Bangladesh or Pakistan; to the Brumadinho dam breach in Brazil; or the situations at Foxconn in Taiwan, catastrophes in GVCs are often euphemistically labelled as accidents. In many cases, the affected are waiting for legal action to this day, as the enterprises concerned deny their responsibility.
Women are major contributors to supply chains, sometimes comprising up to 80 or 90% of workers. 2.3 million women and men die from work-related ailments every year, with even larger numbers injured at work. 2 billion people work in the informal economy without any decent work standards. Children are exploited in big commodity chains for cocoa or coffee. Women and girls are often more affected than men by GVC catastrophes – and they face even more difficulties in getting compensation. Hence, human rights regulations are essential within the business and finance sector to protect the rights and wellbeing of all involved in the global supply chain.
Why we need a UN Treaty on business & human rights
An agreement that – ideally – all countries and all companies comply with could fundamentally overcome income poverty, child labour, gender gaps in employment and wages, and create dignified and healthy production and consumption environments. It could also help confront autocracies, as they would lose business if they undercut the agreement.

The quest for a universal agreement that is obligatory – legally binding – is decades old. A historic marker is the scathing speech by President Salvador Allende at the United Nations (UN) general assembly in 1972 revealing the harmful actions of transnational corporations (TNCs) in Chile, his home country.
In response, the UN introduced talks on an obligatory “code of conduct”, but the United States government halted these efforts in 1992. Instead, the UN turned to voluntary principles – which are useful and have had positive effects. However, they are not enough to effectively address harmful business practices.
In 2014, the countries from the global south, led by Ecuador and South Africa, therefore launched a new effort for binding regulation. This proposal, known as the UN treaty on business and human rights has the following goals:
- For companies to abide by labour and environmental standards and prevent harm, monitoring, with so called due diligence – great care – all the inputs along their global value chains;
- When damage does happen, stop it as quickly possible;
- Compensate the victims and affected communities;
- Establish workable rules for workers to claim their rights and receive compensation; and
- Protect trade unionists and Human Rights Defenders, especially women.
Where are we now?
Since 2014, there have been annual negotiations, chaired by the government of Ecuador, at the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. 74 countries plus the EU and almost 50 progressive CSOs participated at the 10th session in December, 2024. They made some progress on discussing the specific content of the Treaty’s draft. A number of governments representatives and civil society organisations insisted on gender-just language, on carefully refining the concept of ‘’victims’’, and the reinstatement of climate justice as a goal, which the previous chair had deleted from an earlier draft. The Human Rights Council has mobilised funding for intersessional meetings from April 2025 to advance these discussions.
Volker Türk (2024), the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, outlined the challenge at the opening of the 10th session:
“More than ever before, business has incredible potential to promote and protect human rights: … to lead a green, just, and sustainable transition. It also has the power to do the exact opposite: to damage human rights, to deepen inequalities, to heighten discrimination, and to wreck our planet and our ecosystems. Too many businesses prioritize profit over every other consideration. We see this everywhere: from the destructive and existential consequences of the fossil fuel industry to the perils of AI technology. From the forced displacement of Indigenous Peoples to exploitative working conditions in industries all over the world. We see it in the arms trade. … And we see it in deep connections between violence, conflict and consumption patterns. The civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is also fuelled by the illegal exploitation of – and illicit trade in – DRC’s natural resources. It puts mobile phones in our pockets while people in the eastern DRC don’t have a future.”
Currently, we are seeing a gain in momentum on the issue.
Brazil, Mexico, and India, for example, are strengthening their business and human rights legislation. Germany, France, the EU adopted due diligence laws, and the UK and Australia have in place modern slavery prohibition acts. The push for such legislation comes from progressive lawmakers and civil society actors, and we need to stay alert to protect this momentum against all autocratic trends.
Why this matters to us at WECF?
In team work with the German Alliance for a Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights, I represented WECF at the December negotiations, and WECF co-sponsored several statements by CSO coalitions. Why?

ALL the issues WECF works on connect to global value chains and the impacts of neoliberalism and hyperglobalisation. This is most directly evident in projects and programmes on clean energy, plastics, water, and chemicals. For example, the annual gender-just climate solutions highlights partners who are pioneering forms of responsible and sustainable entrepreneurship, which would benefit from such a global treaty on business and human rights.
And more generally, our overarching ecofeminist goal of achieving the Agenda 2030, the Paris agreement, or the Pact for the Future needs a global agreement on how global value chain’s function – so that the system really changes.
Gabriele Koehler, member of the board, WECF Germany, is a development economist. She is a senior research associate with UNRISD, a member of the German Alliance for a Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights, and a member of the UNICEF NatCom Germany. She works on human rights, gender justice, decent work and social protection.
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