Full report: "Banking with Principles?"
…The UN Guiding Principles, while not perfect, provide the clearest expression yet of the international community’s expectations of the human rights responsibilities of corporations, including private sector banks. The most notable response by the banking sector to date has been the formation of the Thun Group in 2011 to discuss the implementation of the Principles, and their first discussion paper, launched in 2013. More than one year from the launch of this paper, and more than three years from the launch of the Guiding Principles themselves, this study attempts to assess how banks are doing at implementing the Principles into their own operations, policies and reporting. To do this, we have benchmarked 32 large global banks against a set of 12 criteria. These criteria fall into four categories: policy commitment; due diligence commitment; reporting and access to remedy. We have provided banks with the opportunity to comment on a draft of the criteria and also on a draft of the scores, and we have worked with an independent reviewer to ensure the robustness of the scores…