26 June, 2015 Transnational companies are not accountable to binding treaties for their role in human rights abuses, while some private sector actors are responsible for a range of systemic human rights abuses.
At the same time the push for many global trade deals -and investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms that are included- undermine the sovereignty of states and restrict their policy space while it protects the interests of foreign investors above human rights, the public interest and the environment.
International financial institutions make matters worse by using loans to impose austerity measures and structural adjustment policies that have destroyed social safety nets and exacerbated poverty.
Therefore civil society groups, including WIDE+, have called ahead of the High Level Conference on Aid Effectiveness in July and the final conclusions on the new Sustainable Development Goals in September for the following safeguards and conditions to be included:
- Exclude essential public services including water and sanitation services, education and health care services that implicate States’ duties to guarantee the human rights to water and sanitation, education, and health for all from private sector partnerships and private financing within the FFD3 agenda.
- Ensure that development aid or loans aimed at implementing the Post-2015 Development Agenda are not tied to conditionalities forcing privatization or liberalization.
- Ensure that the global partnership for development is between State actors and that States be accountable to human rights obligations (including extra-territorial human rights obligations).