Banks and human rights: Goethe Lecture on 26.11.2015

The "Goethe Lectures Offenbach" series concluded in 2015 with a lecture by Dr. Manuel Wörsdörfer on 26 November, which was dedicated to the topic of "Banks and human rights - between aspiration and reality". Multinational banks in particular should bear social responsibility. But are they fulfilling their corporate social responsibility (CSR) if they merely avoid violating human rights instead of actively working to protect them?

In his presentation, Manuel Wörsdörfer shed light on the claim and reality of the so-called Equator Principles (EPs), a self-imposed ethical framework for the protection of human rights in international financial consortia. The participating financial institutions, the "Equator Banks", undertake to comply with transnational environmental, social and human rights standards when allocating the respective project funds.

But what does this mean in concrete terms? What measures can and should banks take to guarantee the observance and protection of human rights in the context of project financing? The presentation focused on highlighting an understanding of "CSR", according to which banks should exert their economic policy influence over their respective business partners both before granting a loan and throughout the course of the project - with the aim of promoting ethically and socially sustainable business practices. Wörsdörfer argued for (financial) corporate "human rights activism" and the associated "human rights advocacy", which aims to proactively protect and realize human rights and not merely respect them, as called for by former UN Special Representative John Ruggie and the "EPs", for example.

Manuel Wörsdörfer is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Cluster of Excellence "The Formation of Normative Orders" at Goethe University Frankfurt. His research focuses on economic and business ethics as well as the history of economic theory. He is a research associate of the cluster research project "Self-interest vs. the common good: On the change of norms within economics". His monograph 'A New Understanding of Economic Behavior, Organizations and Regulation - Foundations, Options and Challenges' will soon be published on the subject of equator principles.