Corporate Influence in the Context of Health and Environmental Protection — What role for human rights and accountability? | HRC63 Side Event

About this Event

Through deregulation, disinformation, and conflicts of interest, corporate influence is already shaping and undermining regulation and multilateral fora. Many human rights experts have warned that fossil fuel corporations are among the main contributors to the triple planetary crisis of climate change, chemicals and pollution, and biodiversity loss. These same industries are the primary drivers of the global toxic and chemical pollution burden on human health. Despite growing awareness of health, environmental, and human rights impacts of these chemicals — including endocrine disruption, reproductive harm, and links to cancer —  industries are still producing endocrine-disrupting PFAS, highly hazardous pesticides, and toxic plastics.

What’s the role for human rights, accountability, and transparency, in light of upcoming multilateral negotiations? What can we learn from other processes and institutions?

In the context of the plastic treaty negotiation, whose last formal substantial session (INC-5.2) ended in August 2025, CIEL’s analysis shows that the number of lobbyists has risen throughout the course of negotiations. It raises concerns about corporate influence, finding that chemical and fossil fuel industry lobbyists were the highest recorded in the negotiations, outnumbering the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastic Treaty (60) by nearly four to one, and the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Plastics (36) by nearly seven to one. Provisions on chemicals, production, human rights, and health protection in the plastic treaty text remain at risk. While the next INC negotiation (INC-5.4) is scheduled for March 2027, Member States’ discussions have continued in informal Heads of Delegation meetings throughout 2026, and will continue at the next informal session in Bangkok at the end of September 2026. However, despite several calls from civil society and rightsholders, observers have not been invited.

In October 2026, the twelfth session of the open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises (OEIGWG) will continue to discuss an international legally binding instrument to regulate, under international human rights law, the activities of corporations.

The spotlight on the role that corporate actors — especially transnational corporations and financial institutions — play in fueling the environmental crisis and undermining human rights is growing, building on the body of jurisprudence and findings by human rights institutions. This includes the right to a healthy environment, and corresponding obligations of States and corporations. From the advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), to the Framework Principles on Human Rights and the Environment, which outline States’ obligations with regard to the right to a healthy environment, also establish that States must regulate private actors that have the potential to harm the environment and human rights. Environmental disinformation also affects the enjoyment and realization of human rights, and States should take measures to prevent and counter it at all levels of environmental governance.

This side event examined how corporate influence is undermining human rights, health, and environmental protection by delaying regulation, using a pollution playbook spanning from endocrine-disrupting chemicals, to pesticides, and plastics. Panelists reflected on common issues, from the plastics treaty process to the 12th session of the OEIGWG, and identify potential common solutions.

Speakers

Bethanie CARNEY ALMROTH

UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights

Ana Maria SUAREZ FRANCO

Secretary General, FIAN International

Miguel LUÍS

Counsellor, Permanent Mission of Portugal to the UN Office and other international organizations in Geneva

Kate ROBERTSON

Technical Officer (Legal), Fiscal and Legal Measures Unit, Department of Health Determinants, Promotion and Prevention, World Health Organization

Helionor DE ANZIZU

Senior Attorney, Environmental Health, Center for International Environmental Law | Moderator

Highlights

Video

Live from Palais des Nations

Links

• Environment @ 63rd Session of the UN Human Rights Council
• Human Rights, Hazardous Substances, and the Role of Geneva
• UN Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes
  • Thirty years of the mandate on toxics and human rights (A/81/170)
  • Forever chemicals and human rights |(A/HRC/63/27)
  • Right to science in the context of toxic substances (A/HRC/48/61)
• Human Rights Council Advisory Committee
  • Impact of disinformation on the enjoyment and realization of human rights (A/HRC/61/68)
• WHO initiative page on plastics and health  | WHO
• No Profit Without Accountability for People and the Planet | FIAN International, FES, CIEL, ESCR-Net, Franciscans International, ISHR
• The Pollution Playbook: How Industry Blocks Regulation of Toxic Chemicals | CIEL & CEO
• The Plastics Plot: The Corporate Disinformation Tactics Behind Plastics Pollution | CIEL
• Fossil Fuel and Petrochemical Lobbyists Overrun Plastics Treaty Negotiations | CIEL