BankTrack [...] has ranked 50 of the world’s largest according to the action they can prove they are taking on UN human rights principles.

It cited the Brumadinho disaster in January, which killed at least 248 people and led to calls for banks to suspend financing to Vale [...], and the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy, where pressure groups defending Native Americans’ rights organised a campaign to boycott those involved in its financing, as examples of how complicity in human rights infringements can hurt banks’ business.

BankTrack scored the 50 banks on four criteria: whether they publicly commit to supporting human rights; whether they can show evidence that they assess human rights risks in companies they lend to; how comprehensive their reporting is; and whether they provide any means for people hurt by their activities to seek redress.

Overall, the group said, four out of five banks are “failing on human rights”. Its report found that while “the basics are increasingly in place” — 35 of the 50 banks had at least published a pledge to respect human rights in general — there was “little progress on reporting” and “none of the banks analysed have, or even claim to have, established an effective grievance mechanism for those affected by the impacts of their finance”...