17/01/2024
The Church Commissioners for England has explained how it is holding company management accountable to its investor expectations on human rights in a new Human Rights report.
“Social inequality presents a systemic risk to economies and diversified portfolios. Companies can best understand and address their links to inequalities by meeting their responsibility to respect human rights,” said Dan Neale, Social Lead, Church Commissioners for England. “During 2023, we worked towards a more systematic approach to human rights issues in our portfolio, with the aim of mitigating risks to broader society – and risks to long-term returns.”
The report calls on companies to provide better data on human rights, and for investors to systematically integrate human rights data into their investment and stewardship activities.
The Church Commissioners will further integrate human rights data into its voting, and will continue to lead on efforts to create best practice around the use of human rights data in investor stewardship. It will do so through its ESG data provider and proxy advisor engagements in 2024, as part of a collaborative investor initiative set up with Aviva Investors and Scottish Widows.