This working paper gives an overview of the debate from the early efforts to formulate the UN Code of Conduct to the current initiative for a binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights. It particularly focuses on the responses by TNCs and their leading interest groups to the various UN initiatives, specifies the key actors and their objectives, and describes how many of their demands were ultimately reflected in governmental positions and UN decisions. The working paper ends with remarks on what could be done to counteract and reverse corporate influence on the UN human rights agenda.

Infant and children mortality is still a major concern globally. Breastfeeding has proven to be one of the most effective, low-cost interventions to save children’s lives. In order to protect breastfeeding, in 1981, the World Health Assembly (WHA) adopted the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes (the Code), to date completed and extended by fifteen subsequent relevant WHA resolutions. The Code aims to ensure that parents can make fully informed decisions about infant and young child feeding by banning marketing practices that undermine breastfeeding. […] However, since 1981, only 35 countries have fully implemented the Code. In absence of effective marketing regulation, and notwithstanding their obligation under human rights law, baby food companies are systematically violating the Code provisions by malevolent marketing practices and tactics that mislead consumers and health professionals. […]

Le nouveau rapport « Breaking the Rules » (en anglais), publié en janvier 2014 par IBFAN-ICDC (IBFAN International Code Documentation Centre), détaille les tendances mondiales en matière de commercialisation des fabricants d’aliments pour bébés et dénonce les violations du Code international de commercialisation des substituts du lait maternel et résolutions ultérieures pertinentes de l’Assemblée Mondiale de la Santé, entre […]