BHR Breakfast meeting: Human rights in capital markets, challenges for the financial sector

Human Rights have increasingly become the benchmark for measuring companies’ responsible management. In this sense, several National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights have been developed and approved in several countries, many businesses have integrated human rights management policies at operational level, investors more and more focus attention on business activities human rights impacts and civil society organizations place more pressure to get the business management ensure respect of human rights within the organization or to repair actual abuses anywhere around the world.

However, there is still a huge challenge to include the duty to respect human rights within the capital market sensitivity. There are advancements in some corporate financing profiles, as in the case of project funding or the inclusion of responsible investment criteria. Some institutional investors and investment portfolios already consider human rights to be decisive. The road, however, remains difficult and the market still fails to assess, in an effective way, the most relevant human rights issues. Analysts and investors still prioritize the profitability, even at the risk of violating human rights. Specialised analysis can focus on the policies and processes that seek to avoid possible violations, but still lack of reaction capacity when a company, included in their indexes, are accused of human rights abuses. How to get in capital markets more sensitivity related to these topics is still an open question.

How can we improve analysts’ assessment and reaction capacity? How can we enhance human rights reporting to improve the quality of the information available to investors? These and other questions will be posed in this breakfast meeting.

Target:

• Investors relation offices, institutional investors, investment portfolios, sustainability areas.

Date and place: The date is approximate. We will inform in due time, as well as the place where the event will be held.

Entrance and registration: By invitation