The consultation provided a framing discussion of the roles and inter-relationship of judicial and non-judicial mechanisms and also focused on the National Contact Points (NCPs) of the 42 states that have adhered to the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises.  It also brought in some discussion of other national ombuds systems that do, or could, provide a similar role. The participants also debated the question of whether additional non-judicial mechanisms are needed at the international level, and if so what form they should take.  The meeting also sought to build on the foregoing discussions by looking at the ‘system’ of non-judicial grievance mechanisms as a whole and how it should ideally operate across local, national, and international levels, using existing and/or new mechanisms, with adjudicative and/or mediation-based functions, and keeping in mind the judicial context.

There was general agreement that judicial and non-judicial mechanisms were not, and should not be considered, competing types of mechanism in a binary or zero-sum relationship.  Instead, participants saw the two kinds of mechanism as complementary and part of a complex and dynamic relationship.

The idea of promoting legislated non-judicial grievance mechanisms recurred as one way to provide a framework that could integrate the functions of advocating prevention, addressing grievances (whether through mediation or adjudication), helping establish precedents and pushing for systemic change.  Such mechanisms were also seen as a way to bring government into the equation, whether as an administrator or as a party, together with the company.

There was also much discussion of the weaknesses currently typical of many NCPs and the Dutch and UK NCPs were seen as examples where innovations were overcoming some of the problems identified. The success that the Dutch and the UK models demonstrated proved that there is in fact considerable flexibility available for governments to improve NCPs through innovation, a prevailing concern was how few had done so.