The object of our working group is to produce evidence to enable the Council of Ministers to recommend measures to the 47 member countries to urge the extractive industries multinationals domiciled in their countries to promote the codevelopment of the local populations where their industries are located as a means of increasing standards of living and acting as a brake on emigration.

This working group was specially developed with a view to improving the human rights of African, Latin American and Asian populations but the Chair of the Human Rights Committee, Michel AGUILAR, has asked us to concentrate especially on Central and Eastern Europe whilst not forgetting Africa, Latin America and Asia.

We regularly meet in Strasbourg at the end of every quarter and our last meeting was on 30thSeptember. Our working group consists of about twenty to thirty people most of whom are French or who work in France.  I am the only Spaniard.  Most of the time, our meetings are held in French but I made the last meeting bilingual in English since we hoped to achieve a larger presence due to the letter we had sent to the other international NGOs of the INGO Conference and which cost a lot of effort to write to comply with the requiredments of the Chair of the Human Rights Committee. A copy of the letter in English is attached.  I also attach our report on activity since June and the agenda for our meeting of 30thSeptember which are presented in bilingual format.

We are working in parallel with the Steering Committee for Human Rights, section Business and Human Rights.  We want to show three types of improvement of Codevelopment due to:

Voluntary measures by companies, such as Mondragon;

Measures to improve company reputation by improving human rights and

Obligatory measures such as the United Nations proposal for a treaty on obligatory HR standards for multinationals and the transpositions of the obligatory reporting on payments of over 100,000 euros per year to governments by major companies domiciled in the EEC and foreign companies quoted on EEC stock exchanges is a step in the right direction.

However, the Council of Europe only recommends voluntary measures although its NGOs are able to promote obligatory measures when working in their own countries.

We are working to achieve a SIDE EVENT followed by a recommendation to be voted by the INGO Conference in June 2016 so we have a lot of work in front of us.

We have approached BOKOR and will be contacting ECCLESIA SILENTII and our Polish contacts but do not have their contact details so we call on your assistance for this.

Hugo Castelli Eyre 21/10/15