Charting the Course Forward on ESG Investing and Human Rights
The Investor Alliance for Human Rights hosted an investor dialogue with Robert McCorquodale, Member of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights (UNWG) and principal author of Investors, ESG and Human Rights report. Robert McCorquodale is also Emeritus Professor of International Law and Human Rights at the University of Nottingham, UK, and a barrister and mediator at Brick Court Chambers, London.
The objective of this session is to start identifying the critical short, medium, and long-term strategies that investors and other stakeholders in the ESG investment ecosystem must take to effectively implement the report’s recommendations and work towards the systematic integration of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) into ESG investment activities and approaches.
The session commenced with opening remarks from Robert McCorquodale highlighting key findings and recommendations from the report for investors, as well as other business actors within the ESG ecosystem. This was followed by an interactive discussion of the findings of the report and next steps with our investor audience to share thoughts and questions. We proposed a focus on the following three areas to guide the discussion:
- Investor efforts to engage commercial data providers on the need for decision-useful human rights data,
- Efforts to integrate human rights due diligence as outlined in the UNGPs into the screening and stewardship of passive / ESG-indexed funds,
- Meaningful and ongoing stakeholder engagement efforts by investors including in the context of meaningful access to remedy, followed by other questions and comments from our investor audience.
We closed the session by highlighting strategies identified during the discussion to help investors chart the course forward in integrating the UNGPs into ESG investment activities.