ICTUR human rights submissions
Over the course of the past two months, ICTUR has submitted evidence to two UK Parliamentary Committees. In the first of these, ICTUR submitted a report to the inquiry into Business and Human Rights held by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. ICTUR argued that the United Kingdom had a responsibility to improve the human rights impacts of British companies in their operations overseas, noting the particularly dominant positions these companies may enjoy in former colonies in particular, and arguing that improvements in the labour conditions in British multinational companies could facilitate improvements more generally for labour rights in countries in which these companies are the largest private employers. ICTUR also highlighted the effective use that had been made by global union UNI of the National Contact Point for the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Companies in its campaign to secure a global agreement with property services giant G4S.

ICTUR also presented submissions to the inquiry into overseas territories held by the Foreign Affairs Committee. ICTUR highlighted the situation of Moroccan migrant workers in Gibraltar and called on the British government to take urgent steps to bring about an improvement in the human rights conditions of the Moroccans, arguing in particular that a moral debt was owed, dating back to the role that the Moroccans had played in providing vital assistance to an important British military facility in the 1960s and 70s, in addition to noting the apparent discrepancies between the UK’s human rights commitments under international law and the situation in Gibraltar.