A/HRC/28/65 “zero tolerance” policy within their supply chains in relation to land grabbing and protecting the land rights of rural and indigenous communities. 70 These are important victories, yet monitoring and proper enforcement by the companies is essential to ensure that these committments are upheld. 67. The question of accountability in relation to TNCs and IFIs is still a grey area in international law. However, there has been significant progress on the part of some States, human rights organizations, and even some TNCs in developing guidelines to ensure the protection of human rights and the environment. Providing a uniformly enforced regulatory framework may actually encourage foreign investment in developing countries by levelling the business playing field for ethical corporations. Some companies have begun to recognize the merits of operating under enforceable standards that apply to all their competitors, rather than voluntary standards that only really influence companies with prominent public profiles.71 68. Following the unanimous adoption of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in June 2011, the Human Rights Council subsequently called on all Member States in June 2014 to develop national action plans to further the implementation of the Guiding Principles within their respective national contexts. This development followed similar requests to Member States made by the European Union in 2011 and 2012 and Council of Europe in 2014. However, as of 1 December 2014, only six States have developed and published NAPs on business and human rights: Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.72 At the same time, a number of other governments have begun the process of developing national action plans on business and human rights or have publicly announced an intention to do so.73 The Special Rapporteur congratulates those States which have developed plans and encourages others to do so as a matter of priority. In order to encourage more States, business enterprises and civil society actors to engage in the process, the Working Group on Business and Human Rights on 1 December launched its guidance on national action plans.74 69. In June 2014, the Human Rights Council decided to establish an open-ended intergovernmental working group with a mandate “to elaborate an international legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises” (resolution 26/9). It was decided that the open-ended intergovernmental working group would hold its first session in 2015 “to collect inputs … on possible principles, scope and elements of such an international instrument” and that the Chairperson-Rapporteur of the working group should prepare elements for the draft instrument for substantive negotiations at the commencement of the working group’s third session. 70. The Special Rapporteur’s predecessor, Olivier De Schutter, in a statement of March 2014 underlined that international human rights law has already gone a long way towards recognizing duties of States to regulate the activities of corporations, and that the 70 71 72 73 74 Details available from www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/these-10-companies-make-a-lot-ofthe-food-we-buy-heres-how-we-made-them-better/. Langford et al., Global Justice, State Duties, p. 7. See overview of national action plans maintained by the Working Group on Business and Human Rights, available from www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Business/Pages/NationalActionPlans.aspx; and ICAR and ECCJ, “Assessments of Existing National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights (2014). Including Azerbaijan, Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Mexico, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, the United Republic of Tanzania and the United States. See www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Business/Pages/NationalActionPlans.aspx. 19