A/HRC/37/58 and pursue precautionary measures to protect against environmental harm, especially when there are threats of serious or irreversible damage. 73. In this light, States should consider and, wherever possible, implement recommendations from expert agencies on specific measures to protect children’s health and well-being from environmental harm. 92 WHO and UNICEF, in particular, have published detailed recommendations, including many examples of good practices.93 Some simple changes could have enormous effects. For example, WHO states that widespread handwashing with soap after defecation and before preparing food would greatly reduce the incidence of diarrhoea, trachoma and respiratory infections that kill or harm so many children under the age of 5.94 74. States should cooperate to address the effects of environmental harm on the rights of children, including by sharing information on the toxicity and other characteristics of chemicals and other products and ensuring that international trade in chemicals and waste is in full compliance with the relevant environmental treaties. 75. With respect to the activities of business enterprises operating in more than one State, the States concerned should cooperate to ensure that the businesses comply with all applicable environmental laws, including by providing that victims of environmental harm allegedly caused by businesses have access to effective remedies in the courts of the States where the businesses are based as well as the States where the victims experienced the harm. 76. States should ensure that children in particularly vulnerable situations are able to exercise their human rights on an equal basis and that environmental harm does not affect them disproportionately, including by ensuring that impact assessment procedures take fully into account the effects of proposed policies, programmes and projects on the children most at risk. 77. States that have not yet done so should become parties to the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the State that has not yet ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child should do so without further delay. 78. International financial mechanisms should ensure that the projects that they support do not cause environmental harm that adversely affects the rights of children, by including appropriate protections in their social and environmental safeguards. 79. Business enterprises should protect children’s rights from environmental harm from their activities, including by carrying out environmental and human rights impact assessments that examine the effects of proposed actions on children, and by fully complying with the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the Children’s Rights and Business Principles, and the recommendations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child in its general comment No. 16. 80. The Committee on the Rights of the Child should consider adopting a new general comment on children’s rights and the environment. 92 93 94 States should also implement the recommendations of the Special Rapporteur on hazardous substances and wastes with respect to the threats to children from toxic chemicals (see A/HRC/33/41, paras. 110–114), and those of OHCHR contained in its report on climate change and human rights (see A/HRC/35/13, paras. 57–66). See, for example, WHO, Inheriting a sustainable world?; WHO, “Don’t pollute my future!”, UNICEF, Clear the air for children; UNICEF, Unless we act now. WHO, Inheriting a sustainable world?, p. 32, indicates that it is estimated that handwashing with soap could reduce diarrhoeal disease by 23 per cent and prevent 297,000 deaths per year from diarrhoea alone. 19