"Call to nominate project/company cases for banks and human rights report", Jun 2015

We are aiming to follow up our "Banking with Principles?" report on banks' human rights policies and processes (from the end of last year), by attempting to assess banks' records on financing actual corporate human rights abuses. This should allow us to identify which banks have the best/worst human rights records in terms of actual finance, and how this compares to the strength of their policies and processes, to back our call on banks to strengthen their approaches to human rights and meet the UN Guiding Principles at a minimum...

For this, we need your help...

The project will involve researching each case and who is financing it, to produce a profile on our website and in the finished report. This should help raise the profile of the campaigns around each case, and link it to records of the banks providing the finance, hopefully helping affected communities. We'll also be contacting the banks for their response.

We are also considering highlighting positive case studies where banks dealt with human rights impacts that they financed in a constructive way, to encourage good practice as and when we find it.

We want to open process of nomination to identify cases - either projects or companies - which need attention.

We intend to select the projects on the basis of clear human rights impacts; clear campaign needs; the presence of large commercial banks involved in financing...and with the aim of representing a range of human rights (right to life, land, water, food, labour rights, indigenous peoples rights etc.) and sectors (fossil fuel projects, forestry projects, dams, mining etc.).

If you have a project or company to nominate, or even a couple of suggestions, please let me know by 26th June. Feel free to share this widely with your networks - we will consider all suggestions.

It would be helpful if you could include a brief note on the project / company, the nature of the human rights impacts, what is already known about bank links to the project / company, and existing resources we could use as sources for a profile.

What happens next?

• If the case study is chosen for inclusion in the report, we'll invite you to collaborate in building the case study and to be listed as a collaborator in the report (without any obligation here).
• We will commission research where needed into which banks are financing the project/company, and share this with you in full (as well as including a summary on our online profile and in the report).