BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS: Candidates announced for UN Working Group elections

Summary: The candidates for the new UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights have been announced ahead of the upcoming elections in September.

The candidates for the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights*, formed after the Human Rights Council endorsed a new set of Guiding Principles, have been announced.

The Candidates

• Candidates from the Group of African States
• Candidates from the Group of Asian States
• Candidates from the Group of Eastern European States
• Candidates from the Group of Latin American and Caribbean States
• Candidates from the Group of Western European and other States

Children's Rights Representation

With the disappointment of seeing children's rights excluded from the Guiding Principles, the nomination process for the five independent experts who will make up the Working Group has taken on greater importance.  

CRIN has looked at the list of candidates to identify those with a focus on children's rights. The findings of the research were discouraging, with few candidates displaying an expertise or notable interest in children's rights.

There were, however, a handful of candidates with some background in child rights, including:

• A Director of an International NGO, with a focus on child labour, trafficking and child slavery.
• A Professor from Malawi, who has taught a post-graduate course in "The International rights of the child" at the University of Cape Town.
• A Lecturer from Thailand, who is on the Board of Trustees of Action Aid International, and has also worked for UNICEF in Thailand.
• An NGO Executive Director from Indonesia, whose past roles included managing a human rights education programme in schools and producing films on the sale and trafficking of children. 
• A Secretary-General and Legal Adviser for the United Nations Youth Club, whose past roles included creating child-friendly texts for the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other Conventions focused on children.

The Elections

The five members of the new UN Working Group will be appointed during the 18th Session of the Human Rights Council which is scheduled to take place from 12 - 30 September this year.

More details on the appointment process and the 18th session will be displayed in due course on our page below.

• Visit our 18th Session page
  

What you can do

Have a look through the list of candidates above and lobby your own governments to vote for candidates who will pay the most attention to children's rights in the new UN Working Group.

Further Information

• Read the Guiding Principles
• Read more about the process and NGO criticism
• Transparency campaign: The future of children's rights - in whose hands?
• Visit the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre
  

*Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises