Banks are failing on human rights nearly a decade after new UN principles were established to guide their behavior, according to the third BankTrack Human Rights Benchmark, published today...

“There is increasing ‘lip-service’ paid to human rights compliance by the biggest global banks, but in the vast majority of cases it goes no further than this,” said report author Ryan Brightwell. “Banks are still implicated in – or even directly facilitating – human rights abuses, including violations of Indigenous peoples’ rights, land grabs and even war crimes.”

Dutch bank ABN AMRO tops the league table, the only bank to be classed as a ‘leader’ for the breadth of its human rights commitments and reporting. The highest-performing UK and US banks are Barclays and Citi respectively, which both make it to the ‘front runners’ group. However, even these banks have much room for improvement before they can be said to be adequately implementing their human rights responsibilities...

“Regulators will need to intervene if banks continue to fail,” said BankTrack director Johan Frijns...