The UNEP FI Human Rights Guidance Tool for the Finance Sector is designed as an online signposting tool providing information to lenders on human rights risks. Included in the tool you will find:
While the tool focuses specifically on human rights issues relevant to the assessment of business relationships and transactions, links are also provided within each sector briefing to the broader environmental and social risk guidance also provided on the UNEP FI member extranet. Together these form part of the growing array of tools and guidance available to members.
The Human Rights Guidance Tool has been revised by members of the UNEP FI Human Rights Working Group, the Secretariat of UNEP FI and the human rights consultancy Sally Britton Consulting. It was originally reviewed by the UNEP FI Regional Task Forces and consultation with them will continue. A legal review of the original Guidance Tool was provided by Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP.
Launched in October 2007 at the Melbourne roundtable, the tool was refined in 2008 based on feedback from financial institutions using the tool and the broader stakeholder community, including industry groups and NGOs. In 2011, it has been thoroughly reviewed and revised to reflect recent events and developments, particularly the work of the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Business & Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie. (See the section in this Introduction, Human Rights and the UN Special Representative.)
We hope that this tool will provide a useful resource for financial sector professionals, and will assist you in incorporating human rights issues, not only into risk assessments, but also into other aspects of your organisation, for example in screening suppliers, or addressing labour relations in the workforce. Financial institutions will want to use the tool to assess the human rights issues in their own business and its supply chain and may also find it useful in reviewing other aspects of financial services provision, in addition to lending policies and practices. Whilst the focus of the tool is on issues for lending managers, human rights are important in relation to all financial sector activity, so others will also find much of interest and relevance in it.
This tool provides a framework for lending managers to:
