STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK ON A NATIONAL ACTION PLAN ON BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS FOR MALAYSIA aspects of its interactions with businesses. 88. Recommendation: The Commission therefore recommends that the Government ensure that all Government departments at the federal and state levels are equipped to act in a manner compatible with the Government’s international human rights obligations when regulating and interacting with businesses. This could be done through workshops and training on the Guiding Principles and business and human rights, and ensuring effective knowledge management within Government departments. The NAP process should be used to increase cross-governmental awareness of the Guiding Principles and the range of ways in which the Government can fulfill its duty to protect against business-related human rights abuses. Relevant Government bodies include: Prime Minister’s Department and related Government agencies at both federal and state levels. Guiding Principle 9 States should maintain adequate domestic policy space to meet their human rights obligations when pursuing business-related policy objectives with other States or business enterprises, for instance through investment treaties or contracts. (13) Ensure that Malaysia’s investment and trade agreements do not have adverse impacts on human rights 89. The Commission welcomes MITI’s engagement with the Commission on the potential human rights impacts of the proposed TPP Agreement. The Commission notes that State obligations under trade and investment agreements may result in restrictions on or requirements affecting a State’s exercise of its domestic regulatory powers. For example, a State’s obligations to provide patent protection under the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights may have an adverse impact on human rights, by, for example, limiting affordable access to medicines.89 Also, investors have used States’ obligations to provide investor protections under international investment agreements and investor-State contracts to sue States for taking regulatory measures that may be regarded as necessary for the fulfilment of human rights, such as affirmative action measures in favour of historically disadvantaged citizens,90 emergency fiscal measures to ensure affordable access to public utilities,91 and bans on the sale and use of certain harmful chemicals on public health grounds.92 90. As States cannot ignore their human rights obligations in the conclusion of trade or investment agreements, it is important to ensure that Malaysia’s trade and investment agreements do not have adverse human rights impacts. Various proposals have been put forward for how States should do so, such as conducting prior human rights impact assessments on trade and investment agreements,93 ensuring that stabilisation clauses in investment agreements do not constrain a government’s policy space to implement legislation to improve corporate respect for human rights,94 and using guidance supported by the former UN Special Representative on business and human rights on how State-investor contract negotiators can integrate human rights risk management into their negotiations.95 28