Working document, based on ILO database on Maternity Protection, sorted region by region and country by country

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.