Open-ended intergovernmental working groups
Open-ended intergovernmental working groups elaborate and/or negotiate and finalize new draft legal instruments. They also make recommendations on the effective implementation of existing instruments. Current groups include:
The Intergovernmental Open-ended Working Group on the Right to Development was set up in 1998 with the aim to monitor and review progress made in the promotion and implementation of the right to development as elaborated in the Declaration on the Right to Development. It also provides recommendations and analyzes obstacles to the full enjoyment of the right to development, focusing each year on specific commitments in the Declaration.
The Intergovernmental Working Group on the Effective Implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action is one of the three mechanisms established to follow up on the decisions made at the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001. The Working Group’s mandate, as spelled out in operative paragraph 7 of the Commission resolution 2002/68, is to make recommendations on the effective implementation of this Programme of Action.
The Ad Hoc Committee on Complementary Standards to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) works to establish complementary standards that strengthen the implementation of the ICERD. These standards are to be in the form of either a convention or additional protocol(s) to the ICERD, should fill existing gaps, and provide new normative standards aimed at combating all forms of contemporary racism, including incitement to racial and religious hatred.
The Open-ended intergovernmental working group on regulatory framework of activities of private military and security companies, established in 2017 and extended in 2020 for another three years, seeks to elaborate an international regulatory framework to protect human rights and ensure accountability for violations and abuses relating to the activities of private military and security companies. It replaces the previous mandate, which ran from 2010-2017.
The Intergovernmental Working Group on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises, established in 2014, seeks to elaborate an international legally-binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises.