Banks and human rights: the Thun Group and the UN guiding principles on business and human rights

Damiano de Felice

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: The publication of the Thun Group’s discussion paper The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: An Interpretation for Banks represented a critical step on the way to delineate the relationship between the financial sector and human rights: the document lays the foundations for the adoption of the first ever comprehensive guide on how universal banks should operationalise their responsibility to respect human rights. As the arguments offered by the Thun Group are likely to influence the way in which numerous financial institutions integrate human rights into their operations, this article offers a critical assessment of the discussion paper. Notwithstanding several positive features, the Thun Group relies on a faulty subsidiary approach, avoids fundamental issues like access to effective remedy and downplays the importance of effective engagement with affected stakeholders.

Keywords: banks; finance; Thun Group; Guiding Principles; business and human rights (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F3 G3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2014-05-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme, nep-hpe and nep-pke
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/58796/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:58796

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().