Dear Friends in the Philippines,

An alliance has been formed of CSOs around the world advocating for States, especially Human Rights Council member-states to support an initiative in June that would begin a process towards establishing a treaty on business and human rights.  We are really looking for support from our Philippines colleagues at this time. You can see information at the Treaty Alliance website.

As you are most aware, there are many cases of serious corporate human rights abuses in the Philippines that certainly justify the need for a treaty to better provide accountability and access to remedy at the international and national level.

The Philippines is a member of the Human Rights Council at the moment.  Their decisions at the Human Rights Council in Geneva in June will be crucial for the future of Corporate Accountability all over the world.

We are writing to ask if you would be willing to write a letter to the Government of the Philippines in the next 2 weeks to ask them to support the initiative, lead by the Governments of Ecuador and South Africa, to begin a process to create a business and human rights treaty.

We’ve developed a Question and Answer sheet in case you have more questions about the details of why we believe a treaty is needed now, and some other contextual issues.  You can access it here.

To help with the drafting process, we have created a template letter to governments and a template press release that you can use as you see fit – It is designed so you can change and personalize it.

Some of you may have already signed on to the Joint Statement calling for an international treaty that emerged from the 2013 ESCR-Net Peoples’ Forum in Bangkok. The Statement is open again for signature, so if you have not signed it yet, please consider doing so by following this link: https://peoplesforum.squarespace.com/sign-on/

There is limited time for taking action because all Human Rights Council member States are currently making up their mind about their position on this at this moment and your voices are vital in this decision making process.

Email us for any support you may need: treatymovement@gmail.com

All the best, in solidarity,

The Alliance

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