BankTrack welcomes Thun Group paper on banks and human rights
Further information and interviews Ryan Brightwell: +31 24 3249 220, ryan@banktrack.org Andreas Missbach: +41 44 277 70 07, amissbach@evb.ch |
Further information and interviews Ryan Brightwell: +31 24 3249 220, ryan@banktrack.org Andreas Missbach: +41 44 277 70 07, amissbach@evb.ch |
Seven leading international banks, informally grouped together as the ‘Thun Group of Banks', last week presented a discussion paper for banks on the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
BankTrack welcomes the
discussion paper as a significant step towards recognising the relevance
of human rights to banks' core business, but regrets that the Thun
Group has not addressed all relevant areas of the UN Guiding Principles.
As such, it calls on the banking sector to finally recognise its
responsibility to provide adequate complaint and remedy mechanisms to
people suffering human rights abuses as a result of bank-financed
activities.
This discussion paper from the Thun Group - which now includes
Barclays, BBVA, Credit Suisse, ING Bank, RBS Group, UBS AG and UniCredit
- is the result of two years of deliberations, and follows the
universal adoption of the UN Guiding Principles by the Human Rights
Council in 2011.
The paper significantly recognizes that the UN Guiding Principles apply
to all parts of a bank's business, including asset management and
personal banking as well as corporate and investment banking. It also
makes an important contribution as a guide to the banking sector for
operationalizing the UN Principles, elaborating on policy and governance
frameworks for banks, and providing guidance on the scope and content
of due diligence procedures for different financial services.
Andreas Missbach of the Swiss NGO Berne Declaration, which launched the
banksandhumanrights.ch website in 2010 to lobby Swiss banks to improve
their human rights policy and practice, said: "We welcome the fact
that the banks for the first time recognize the relevance of human
rights in their core business, and are therefore discussing the
necessary adjustments to their due diligence processes. It is now
crucial that this discussion document translates into real
implementation, with transparent reporting on progress."
Access to remedy missing
However, the paper is disappointingly limited in its scope, focusing
only on Principles 16-21 as "those which are most relevant to banks'
potential adverse impacts on human rights and tend to be most
challenging to implement". No explanation is given as to why the
paper omits principles clearly directed towards businesses, including
those in section 3 of the Principles, ‘Access to Remedy'. The paper
ignores principles calling on companies (including banks) to "establish
or participate in effective operational-level grievance mechanisms for
individuals and communities who may be adversely impacted", and to
"provide for or cooperate in" remediation where they have caused or
contributed to human rights abuses (Principles 22 and 29).
"The discussion of financial institution responsibility to respect
human rights is a welcome and necessary development. However, the
discussion is empty without inclusion of the responsibility to ensure
access to remedy," said Komala Ramachandra at Accountability Counsel,
which assists communities around the world to defend their environmental
and human rights. "Transparent, effective, and legitimate avenues for
addressing and remediating human rights violations, are critical to
building a meaningful system to avoid and address risks discussed in the
paper,"
"BankTrack has long called for banks to establish mechanisms that would
allow rights holders whose rights are violated by bank clients or bank
financed projects access to remedy with the banks themselves", said
Johan Frijns, BankTrack coordinator. "The Thun group seems to have
deliberately left this crucial part of the human rights obligations of
banks out of the discussion paper, a huge missed chance to assist banks
in moving forward on this long neglected obligation."
ENDS
The statement and paper by the Thun Group of Banks can be found on the www.business-humanrights.org website.
In December 2013, BankTrack expanded on its criticisms of the Thun Group discussion paper in a more detailed response paper, here.
Notes for editors
The full text of the UN Guiding Principles is available here. BankTrack's submission on the drafting of the Principles, "Human Rights responsibilities of private sector banks", is here.
banksandhumanrights.ch
See page 5 of the Thun Group Discussion Paper