Over the last several years, the International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) Performance Standards and the Equator Principles (PS/EPs) have become the most widely-accepted framework among international project financiers for managing environmental and social risks of projects in the developing world. This submission to the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises (Special Representative) considers the extent to which the PS/EPs provide sufficient guidance for project sponsors to manage the human rights risks of their operations. It finds that the PS/EPs do not provide project sponsors with a robust framework for meeting their responsibility to respect or remedy human rights.
As a result of these shortcomings, we believe that the PS/EPs must be significantly amended if they are to provide project sponsors with appropriate guidance for meeting their human rights responsibilities and minimizing human rights-related risks.
We respectfully submit that during the next phase of the mandate the Special Representative could make an important contribution to the effort to ensure that projects financed under the PS/EPs meet their baseline responsibility to respect human rights by addressing how these policy regimes could be harmonized with international human rights norms.
Read full text. See also Appendix 1: Case Studies
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