Deputy High Commissioner Dabo presents the High Commissioner’s report on businesses involved in Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory

Mr. President,

I am here today to present our report updating the database of business enterprises involved in certain activities related to the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The Council mandated the High Commissioner to create and update a database of business enterprises involved in one or more of ten listed activities related to the Israeli settlements.

This work is to be undertaken in close consultation with the Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. The cut-off date of the reporting period for this update is 15 April 2026.

The Office continued to be guided by the principles of independence, impartiality, objectivity, credibility and professionalism in discharging this mandate.

The methodology for this report is drawn from the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

The database reflects a factual determination of involvement in adverse impact on the right to self-determination through participation in one or more of the listed activities, based on the totality of evidence available to my Office.

Our Office issued a call for inputs in May 2024. We received 733 submissions reporting allegations of the potential involvement of 596 business enterprises in the listed activities.

Last year’s update reviewed 215 of these. This year’s update covers another 126 enterprises, and 255 remain unassessed. We are continuing to assess them and will duly report on them.

Mr. President,

Out of the 126 business enterprises assessed in preparing this update, the Office found reasonable grounds to believe that 61 were involved in one or more of the listed activities during the assessment period.

This brings the current total number of listed business enterprises to 214, domiciled in 11 countries.

This year’s update also provides information on the type of involvement for each business enterprise listed.

The type of involvement has been determined based on the involvement framework set out in the Guiding Principles. This framework sets out the ways in which business enterprises may become involved in actual or potential adverse human rights impacts - namely through causation, contribution or a direct linkage to an adverse human rights impact.

This information serves as a useful tool for companies to identify and address their responsibilities under international standards.

It also aims to help other stakeholders understand the nature of a company's connection to adverse impacts and the actions they are expected to take in response, in line with the Guiding Principles.

A business enterprise may be removed from the database if credible information shows it is no longer involved in the activities that justified its inclusion. Due to resource limitations, our Office cannot systematically reassess past determinations. However, when our Office receives a request for reassessment which includes new information, it reassesses the involvement of the concerned business enterprise applying the same methodology.

During the reporting period, our Office received requests for reassessment regarding eight business enterprises. It found reasonable grounds to believe that five of them were no longer involved in listed activities, and they were removed from the database. Likewise, our Office found reasonable grounds to believe that one business that had been delisted in the 2025 update for lack of sufficient evidence is involved in one or more of the listed activities. These changes are reflected in the annexes to the report.

The database list is available on our website. In addition, our Office continues to post communications from companies requesting to have their responses to their listing shared publicly on the same dedicated page.

Mr. President,

Our Office remains open to constructive dialogue with business enterprises and other stakeholders in the implementation of this mandate.

Since the presentation of last year’s report, our Office has engaged with 14 Member States, 2 sub-national authorities, 43 business enterprises and 27 other stakeholders. We continue to engage with all interested Member States, business enterprises and other stakeholders.

We call on all States, business enterprises and stakeholders to make constructive use of the information provided through this update, and to uphold their human rights obligations and responsibilities.

Thank you.