UNICEF Switzerland and Liechtenstein and the UN Global Compact Network Switzerland and Liechtenstein published the study entitled "Children’s Rights and Finance: How the Swiss and Liechtenstein financial industry can promote and protect children’s rights". The study emphasizes the significance of children as stakeholders in the financial industry’s activities, highlights how financial institutions’ decisions can have positive or negative impacts on children and provides practical recommendations on how Swiss and Liechtenstein financial industry can promote and protect children’s rights.
Find below the summary for ten key recommendations addressed to banks, wealth and asset managers, insurance companies, and other important stakeholders in the financial industry.
Recommendations to financial institutions
Apply a ‘child-lens approach’ to governance, strategy, risk management, and products and services, and commit to upholding children’s rights
Consider children’s rights in the double-materiality assessment and disclose accordingly
Recognize the positive and negative impacts of all financial products and services on children (directly and indirectly via parents and caregivers); when material adverse impacts are possible, conduct due diligence
As part of sustainable finance or environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing strategies, conduct positive screening to identify companies with above-average performance in relation to children’s rights and create innovative products
Improve stewardship and engagement with clients and investee companies to promote children’s rights
Include children’s and human rights considerations in the financial institution’s net-zero transition plan and strive for a just and inclusive transition
Participate in multi-stakeholder initiatives to increase leverage and seek expertise to promote children’s rights
Recommendations to other key stakeholders
Corporate and institutional clients of financial institutions should commit to respecting the rights of children
ESG research companies, data providers and reporting standard-setters should contribute to the availability of meaningful and comparable data
Regulators and policymakers should cover children’s rights comprehensively beyond child labour and along the entire value chain and hold financial institutions accountable to the same standards as other companies