Respecting and promoting human rights are fundamental principles of our mandate and business conduct. The OeEB Human Rights Policy illustrates our approach and sets expectations for our portfolio companies.
Our investment activities bear a high potential for strengthening human rights, in particular non-discrimination and equality, labour rights, the right to an adequate standard of living and the right to a clean and healthy environment.
Yet, challenging country and sector contexts coupled with complex investment structures also bear risks of adverse human rights impacts. Our grievance mechanism aims to address these impacts and provide our stakeholders with a fair and transparent process for raising concerns.
We acknowledge our particular role as private company with a public mandate as set out in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. We strive to respect human rights in our business conduct and to use our leverage to promote human rights in our investment activities. Where adverse impacts can nevertheless occur, we will address them on the basis of the UNGPs and support also our portfolio companies in this regard. The focus lies on improving outcomes for people.
Our environmental social and human rights management process
Our human rights due diligence process forms an integral part of our IFC Performance Standards based environmental and social manangement process. The latter includes already many human rights aspects, in particular regarding labour and working conditions, land ownership, resettlement, indigenous peoples, health, environment and cultural property. Where human rights aspects are not fully covered, we complete the E&S process on the basis of the UNGPs.
In our investment activities, we take a risk-based approach. This means that the extent of the environmental, social and human rights assessment and risk management depends on the actual and potential adverse impacts of the investment.
Our portfolio includes financial services for corporations (direct investments) and financial intermediaries (indirect investments) which on-lend OeEB financing to their clients. In case of financial intermediaries, we assess their commitment and, where necessary, stregthen their capacities as well as their environmental, social and human rights management system to support them in assessing and mitigating adverse environmental social and human rights impacts in their lending investment activities.
