A/HRC/29/39 International Labour Organization (ILO) treaties and protocols, aimed at combating two specific areas of business-related human rights abuses, namely forced labour and the worst forms of child labour.6 The aims of the study were: (a) To examine the approach of certain ILO treaties to cross-border issues and problems, in particular the extent to which States parties are required to regulate foreign parties and conduct and cooperate in respect of the identification, investigation and enforcement of offences; (b) remedy; To clarify the geographical scope of treaty provisions relating to access to (c) To gather information relating to State practice under these treaty provisions in order to gain an insight into how States parties are interpreting their treaty obligations with respect to regulation, enforcement and access to remedy in practice. 39. OHCHR carried out the project in February and March 2015 as a desk review, with inputs from ILO. The review of international instruments focused on key treaties and ILO recommendations relating to forced labour and the worst forms of child labour. In addition, given that migrant workers and members of indigenous communities are at particular risk of such abuses, the review also covered ILO treaties relating to these groups. To gain a better understanding of State practice in relation to the two focus areas, the review was followed by an analysis of the most recent comments of ILO treaty monitoring bodies in relation to a sample group of 35 jurisdictions (which included the 25 focus jurisdictions selected for the purposes of the detailed comparative process). 40. The results of the preliminary study suggest that, even where States parties are strongly encouraged to consider the use of extraterritorial jurisdiction to combat serious human rights abuses by its own nationals, this is a regulatory method that is resorted to rarely in practice and then only in relation to a narrow range of offences. The measures implemented by States parties with respect to business enterprises seem to focus almost entirely on cases affecting human rights within the national territory. No examples of measures aimed specifically at addressing extraterritorial impacts of business enterprises were identified in the course of the study, although examples of “domestic measures with extraterritorial implications”, such as public information campaigns that are delivered through foreign diplomatic missions and the close monitoring of recruitment organizations, were identified. In addition, the study identified many and varied examples of international and regional cooperation initiatives. These included information-gathering and informationsharing initiatives to aid the detection of crimes, technical assistance, capacity-building and awareness-raising projects, bilateral and regional agreements covering operational matters and initiatives aimed at informing people of their rights and victims of abuse of where to get help. D. Preparatory work relating to project component 3: overcoming financial obstacles to legal claims 41. Successive investigations into barriers to accessing remedy, including the initial study commissioned by OHCHR in 2013, confirm that financial obstacles to legal claims can be among the most difficult to overcome in practice. This is also recognized in the Guiding Principles. In the commentary to Principle 26, it is noted that practical and procedural barriers to accessing judicial remedy can arise where the costs of bringing 6 The full study is available from www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Business/Pages/OHCHRstudyondomesticlawremedies.aspx. 13

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