Is the Money Responsible? : Financial institutions’ human rights responsibilities along a supply chain.

Abstract: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a topic of rising importance in the current human rights discussion. As multinational supply chains have a growing impact on people’ lives, both in more developed and developing countries the question of how to regulate the behaviour of the companies that engage in these supply chains becomes increasingly important. States have tried to do this through both national and international law, by introducing hard law regulations as well as voluntary frameworks, so called soft law initiatives. The general legal framework of international law will first be introduced and subsequently focus will lie on the United Nations Principles on Business and Human Rights (The UN Guiding Principles) concerning the social responsibility of companies. In this thesis, the second of these sections is explored through an investigation into what responsibilities financial institutions, institutions that provides financial services for its clients or members, can be considered to have according to the legal framework associated with the corporate responsibility of human rights. The position of financial institutions is unique in a supply chain due to their distance to the production and hence to the country wherein the most fundamental human rights risks are present. Meanwhile, these financial institutions are also key to the trade operating throughout the supply chain. The thesis will identify the human rights issues along a supply chain and investigate the subsequent responsibilities that are tied to the financial institutions. The primary objective of the thesis is to clarify how to apply the international framework to the financial institutions and provide an answer to the question of what the human rights responsibilities of financial institutions are along a supply chain and to answer the question: what are the human rights responsibilities of financial institutions along a supply chain?