Dear Professor Ruggie,
We are writing in response to the interim report you prepared in your capacity as the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on business and human rights. In opening we would like to reaffirm our appreciation of your substantial and continuing efforts to consider business and human rights issues. It is a matter of record that the concerned NGOs fully supported the creation of the Special Representative’s mandate as a means of advancing and deepening the discussion about corporate responsibility and accountability. We believe that the goal of strengthening standards of corporate accountability, a key aspect of the Special Representative’s mandate, should be met through the adoption of universal standards on business and human rights. We look forward to the final outcome of your study, which, in our view, should make a significant contribution towards realizing this objective. We therefore respectfully call on you, as the Special Representative, to make recommendations to the international community as to the most appropriate and effective means for developing clear international human rights standards for business. To this end, and in a spirit of constructive engagement, we would like to take this opportunity to comment on a few aspects of the interim report and to offer our views on how best to secure the key goal of your mandate: namely to strengthen the protection and promotion of human rights in relation to business.