Human Rights and Shrinking Civil Space – A guide for financial institutions

In April 2023 ABN AMRO, APG Asset Management, ING, Robeco and Morningstar Sustainalytics published the paper ?No News is Bad News? which explores how financial institutions can strengthen human rights assessments of business activities in areas where civic space is restricted. In Spring 2023, Shift held a peer-learning session of its Financial Institutions Practitioners Circle (FIs Circle) to hear more from ABN AMRO and ING about the topics in the paper and to discuss in detail the urgent challenge of addressing impacts on the rights of human rights defenders and the phenomenon of shrinking civic space. This resource captures some of the take-aways from that session, as well as drawing on Shift?s experience working with our partners.