The present report is a comparative study of enabling environments for associations and businesses. The Special Rapporteur asserts that businesses generally operate in better environments, largely because States, multilateral organizations and other key actors make great efforts to create such environments, whereas those actors often make comparatively little effort to improve the environment for associations. The Special Rapporteur concludes that in most cases, States and other actors would better promote and protect the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association if they elevated their treatment of associations to the same level as their treatment of businesses.