On May 1, 2019, EDC launched a board-approved Human Rights Policy, which aligns with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and recognizes our responsibility to respect all internationally recognized human rights, both within our organization and through our transactional relationships. Importantly, the policy also creates the conditions for thoughtful and considered decision making, in a way that accounts for impacts on people and provides direction for navigating complex issues.
The development of EDC’s policy was an opportunity to highlight the work we’ve been doing to bring a human rights lens to the due diligence we conduct on transactions. As part of the process, we conducted extensive public consultation with civil society, government and industry, and sought guidance from Shift, a non-profit organization that is the leading centre of expertise on the UNGPs.
To help facilitate our CSR and human rights journey, we’ve made some important internal changes.
- We’ve grown our Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility team, ensuring we have the right people in place to support our business.
- On the human rights front, we have dedicated organizational change management resources to help facilitate the changes associated with our new policy.
- We’re developing targeted positions for sectors where we’ve identified higher risk profiles (e.g. garment, telecom & software) to help our employees better understand environmental, social and human rights–related risks and the parameters of EDC’s approach and risk appetite.
This is by no means a straightforward journey. Embedding human rights into our practices will take time and we may make mistakes along the way. But our view is that as long as we are continuing to evolve, mature and learn from our peers how best to address these complex issues, we’re making important progress.
Looking ahead, 2020 will be an important year for strengthening our human rights management capacity. In our Human Rights Policy Implementation Plan, we’ve committed to defining and implementing a formalized approach to engaging stakeholders on business and human rights, developing guidelines on leverage and remedy, and continuing to increase and improve our reporting and disclosing of our human rights performance in a meaningful way.
Human rights governance, roles and responsibilities
- EDC’s Board of Directors and Executive Management team oversee our environmental and social risk management policies, including the Human Rights Policy.
- Our CSR Advisory Council meets twice a year to advise on CSR practices to help us make transparent and positive contributions to environmental and social issues such as human rights.
- EDC’s Senior Vice-President of Sustainable Business and Enablement (SB&E) is accountable for the development, implementation and maintenance of the Human Rights Policy.
- Reporting to the Senior Vice-President of SB&E, the Vice-President of CSR is responsible for the ESRM team, whose responsibilities include: implementing EDC’s environmental and social risk management policies and procedures; reviewing transactions for environmental, social and human rights–related risks; conducting environmental, social and human rights due diligence for transactions under consideration by EDC; and performing environmental and social monitoring.
- As of 2019, as part of our capacity building, the ESRM team has designated a Centre of Expertise, which plays a strategic role in enabling EDC’s leadership in environmental and social risk management through policy development, operationalization and governance; in refining EDC’s environmental and social risk appetite; and in planning and coordinating key initiatives.
2019 implementation plan
