A/HRC/37/58 ensure that they identify, prevent and mitigate their impact on children’s rights.80 This due diligence should include careful consideration of the effects of their actual and proposed actions on the rights of children through environmental harm. States must also ensure that information held by businesses relevant to the health and well-being of children is made publicly available. 61. States should cooperate with one another to address the effects of global and transboundary harm on the rights of children. 81 For example, in the negotiation and implementation of multilateral environmental agreements, they should address children’s rights, for example by providing that national action plans should include strategies to protect children as well as other vulnerable segments of the population. 82 States should work together to ensure that businesses operating in more than one country comply with their obligations under all applicable domestic laws. The Committee on the Rights of the Child has set out a framework for such cooperation: host States have the primary responsibility to regulate business enterprises operating within their territory, but home States can also have regulatory obligations when there is a reasonable link between the State and the conduct in question. For example, home States in such situations should assist host States with investigation and enforcement; enable access to effective remedies for children and their families who have suffered human rights abuses; and provide that their international assistance agencies identify and protect against harmful effects of any projects that they support.83 62. Businesses have direct responsibilities to respect children’s rights. To meet these responsibilities, it is necessary, but not sufficient, that businesses comply with domestic laws. Certainly businesses should never seek to evade applicable laws through corruption or other practices, or abuse those laws by, for example, bringing criminal defamation suits against those who oppose their activities. But that is a low bar. To respect the rights of children to be free from environmental harm, businesses should comply with the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights; the Children’s Rights and Business Principles; 84 and the recommendations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child in its general comment No. 16 (2013) on State obligations regarding the impact of the business sector on children’s rights. Among other things, they should undertake environmental and human rights impact assessments that examine the effects of proposed actions on children; develop and make public information about the effects of their actions and products on the health and well-being of children; facilitate children’s participation, as appropriate, in consultations; seek to strengthen environmental, health and safety standards, rather than lobby against them; and, in general, avoid causing or contributing to environmental harm to children and remediate any such harm when it does occur. C. Obligations of non-discrimination 63. The Convention on the Rights of the Child requires its States parties to respect and ensure the rights in the Convention to each child within their jurisdiction without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the child’s or his or her parent’s or legal guardian’s race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status (art. 2). Children are also encompassed by the non-discrimination obligations of States under many other human rights agreements, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (arts. 2 (1) and 26)) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (art. 2 (2)). 64. The obligations of States to prohibit discrimination and to ensure equal and effective protection against discrimination undoubtedly apply to the equal enjoyment of human rights relating to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment (see A/HRC/37/59, annex, framework principle 3). These obligations apply not only to direct discrimination, but also 80 81 82 83 84 16 Ibid., para. 62. Ibid., para. 41. See, for example, Minamata Convention on Mercury, annex C, art. 1 (i). See Committee on the Rights of the Child, general comment No. 16, paras. 42–45. The Children’s Rights and Business Principles were developed by UNICEF, the United Nations Global Compact and Save the Children, and released in 2012.