A/HRC/37/63 60. A democratic and equitable international order, as prescribed in the Charter, cannot be achieved through deregulation of trade, markets and financial services. While enterprises deserve protection from corrupt Governments and arbitrary expropriations, Governments also need protection from bribery and corruption by investors, speculators and transnational corporations. Individuals and peoples deserve protection and remedies against corporate abuse, land-grabbing and exploitation. Observers have long decried the anomaly that, while businesses have secured privileged protection of their investments and have created privatized arbitral tribunals to enforce their view of the law, there is no tribunal to protect Governments from business abuse and no protection of individual victims from the negative consequences of business activities. That normative asymmetry must be corrected. Fifty years after the adoption of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, there is still no enforcement mechanism. That reduces the credibility of United Nations institutions that continue adopting Views, declarations and resolutions, which many States and non-State actors ignore. While there are enforcement mechanisms for trade and other agreements at WTO and investor-State dispute settlement, it is imperative to create them globally for human rights treaties. The promise of the United Nations Global Compact and the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights has not been realized, simply because selfregulation never works. 61. Binding obligations on investors and corporations must be incorporated into trade and investment agreements, and public courts must have jurisdiction to examine violations and impose sanctions on violators. Although the Guiding Principles are based on hard law, they are violated with impunity, as illustrated by bilateral investment treaties and free trade agreements that encroach into the regulatory space of States. The treaty should provide for its own monitoring and enforcement body or be incorporated into the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as optional protocols, stipulating that decisions are legally binding, as are those of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. States must enact civil and penal legislation concerning the human rights impacts of business activity; the doctrine of State responsibility should be invoked to make abuses justiciable where the enterprises operate or are registered. In June 2014, the Human Rights Council adopted resolution 26/9 creating an intergovernmental working group with a mandate to draft such an instrument. The Forum on Business and Human Rights contributes to that process. 62. Beyond the treaty, there is an urgent need to strengthen national and international penal law, including anti-trust legislation, to address cases of corruption, fraud, bribery, money-laundering, conspiracy, collusion, tax evasion, insider-trading, looting of pension funds, and reckless endangerment of life and the environment. In that context, the United Nations Convention against Corruption and the United Nations Office at Vienna could advance the process. Also pertinent is the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, as certain activities of mining enterprises, including gold, diamond and coltan mining, as well as the ivory trade, entail criminal acts and gross human rights violations. I. Tax evasion and tax havens 63. In paragraph 71 of his 2016 report to the General Assembly (A/71/286), the Independent Expert focused on the negative impact of tax evasion, profit-shifting and tax competition on the common effort to achieve a more democratic and equitable world order. He recommended, inter alia, that States should: (a) establish an intergovernmental tax body under the auspices of the United Nations with the mandate to elaborate a convention on taxation and international cooperation in tax matters; (b) adopt a common United Nations standard for multilateral and automatic exchange of tax information; (c) implement corporate tax and financial transparency, including public registries of ultimate beneficial ownership; (d) ensure that multinational corporations are treated as single entities conducting business across international borders; (f) abolish “sweetheart” tax deals; member States of the European Union should revise the Code of Conduct for business 17