"Banks and human rights: Assessing strengths and weaknesses of the Thun Group’s approach",

In May 2011, four European banks (Barclays, Credit Suisse, UBS and UniCredit) came together in Thun, Switzerland, and created an informal group (the Thun Group of Banks) to explore what the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) mean for the banking sector. In October 2013, the Group (enlarged by the participation of three additional members: BBVA, ING Bank N.V. and RBS Group) released its first public document, a discussion paper entitled “The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: An interpretation for banks”....Against this background, I followed the lead of other experts (including BankTrack, Andreas Missbach, Ariel Meyerstein and Sarah Altschuller) and wrote a detailed report on the main strengths and weakness of the discussion paper. You can find the report here, and a summary of my arguments here below.