A/HRC/33/40 entail land-grabbing or population displacement. Pursuant to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, any use of indigenous lands requires their free, prior and informed consent. The Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169) of the International Labour Organization (ILO) stipulates bottom-up consultation and participation.29 20. Article 2 provides that all individuals have a right to an effective remedy, such as to compensation for environmental damage caused by transnational corporations. But even a decision of the highest State court against a transnational corporation can be left without implementation when the corporation invokes investor-State dispute settlement against the State and refuses to pay compensation to the victims (see, for example, Chevron Corporation and Texaco Petroleum Corporation v. the Republic of Ecuador, as discussed in the Independent Expert’s other reports). Another problem is that individual victims have no standing before investor-State dispute settlement or investment court system tribunals. 21. Article 6 concerns the right to life. Many activities of transnational corporations threaten the right to life and the right to health, 30 such as when large areas are polluted through open-pit mining, oil sludge, toxic waste and radioactivity. The State has an obligation to adopt precautionary measures to avert such dangers, and that cannot result in corporate claims for “lost profits”. Transnational corporations have been guilty of handing over the names of unionists to the police and to paramilitary groups, leading to the disappearance and death of human rights defenders.31 In order to accommodate the interests of transnational corporations, national police and sometimes armies have been used against demonstrators, at times resulting in deaths. The so-called “evergreening” of patents in the pharmaceutical industry may also lead to deaths because of lack of access to generic medicines and medical equipment at affordable prices. 22. Article 12 concerns the right to freedom of movement. Some mega-projects have led to the involuntary transfer of populations and the loss of homelands, churches and cemeteries. 32 The oil, gas and mining industries have left landscapes devastated and destroyed ecosystems, causing populations to move. In cases where the environment has been seriously polluted, populations cannot return to their homes. 23. Article 14 concerns the right to due process. All suits at law must be adjudicated by independent tribunals under the principles of transparency and accountability. InvestorState dispute settlement tribunals have repeatedly been shown to lack independence, transparency, predictability and accountability. That retrogression undermines the rule of law based on public courts. Some arbitral awards violate the principle of separation of powers, such as when the arbitrators in the Chevron case ordered the Government of Ecuador to interfere with the independent Ecuadorian judiciary by overruling the judgment of the Ecuadorian courts. 24. Article 19 concerns the right to have access to information, including on free trade and investment agreements. Multiple stakeholders, including consumer groups, environmental protection experts, labour unions and health professionals, need precise 29 30 31 32 GE.16-11938 A/70/301. WHO Director-General, Margaret Chen, at the opening of the sixty-ninth session of the World Health Assembly in May 2016, warned about “man-made disasters created by policies that place economic interests above concerns about the well-being of human lives and the planet that sustains them”, www.who.int/dg/speeches/2016/wha-69/en/. Horacio Verbitsky and Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, Cuentas Pendientes (Buenos Aires, Siglo XXI Editores, 2013); www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/21/berta-caceres-name-honduran-militaryhitlist-former-soldier. A/HRC/32/40. 7