Just as for all businesses, institutional investors have a responsibility to respect human rights... Expectations have been driven not only by growing visibility and urgency around many human rights issues, but also by a better understanding of investors’ role in shaping real-world outcomes, and of their responsibility to do so – across all their investment activities.

With regulation on human rights due diligence already implemented in some jurisdictions, more measures in the pipeline and policy making converging around the UNGPs and OECD standards, investors can future-proof their approach to ESG issues by implementing these frameworks now. Leading investors also recognise that meeting international standards [...] leads to better financial risk management...

Institutional investors have a three-part responsibility to respect human rights:

1. policy commitment;
2. due diligence processes;
3. enabling or providing access to remedy...

We are setting out a multi-year agenda for our work towards respect for human rights being implemented in the financial system...