Human rights

Human rights are universal. This means that every person around the world deserves to be treated with dignity and have their interests considered equally. While governments have the duty to protect individuals against human rights abuses, businesses are increasingly recognising their own moral, legal, and commercial responsibility. The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights form the basis for what businesses should adhere to.

On the one hand, businesses can hinder human rights, as evidenced by reports around the world of unsafe working conditions, migrant worker exploitation, and harm done to communities. On the other hand, businesses can help advance human rights by offering access to decent work, creating higher living standards, protecting children’s rights and procuring goods in a responsible manner.

As a bank, we make a substantial contribution to human rights as financier, employer, taxpayer and driver of progress and prosperity. Our impact is on different levels:

In ING’s latest Human Rights Review (2021/22) we disclose the most severe human rights issues in our banking operations and provide updates on our progress in managing human rights risks in our own operations and on our client engagement tool. In earlier editions we addressed the changing external landscape and our response to Covid-19 (2020); our role as a corporate lender and engagement with clients on human rights (2019); and our human rights management approach, policies and priorities (2018).

Read more on our human rights page.