Strengthening respect for human rights in line with our value of human dignity

Human Rights Day is observed every year on 10 December — the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR is a milestone document, which proclaims the inalienable rights that everyone is entitled to as a human being – regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Available in more than 500 languages, it is the most translated document in the world.

At Anthos Fund & Asset Management (Anthos), an essential aspect of our spiritual heritage is the value of human dignity, the very same that has inspired the UDHR, which we adopt as our standard. We recognise that we can only uphold these rights if we create a process to better understand our impact on human rights and labour practices.

We believe that human dignity is a basic human right: universal, inviolable and inalienable. We use the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP) as a framework to safeguard human dignity and follow the UDHR. As a fund-of-funds asset manager, we strive to exclude weapons, tobacco, gambling and adult entertainment from our investments because of their negative impact on human rights and human dignity. Where we cannot, we use our exclusion policy and thresholds to send the strongest possible signals to our external managers, which we combine with dialogue to bring about change.

In 2022, we created a number of workshops together with the leading expert on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, Shift, to develop our knowledge and as a result publish our first Human Rights Statement, as a commitment to further strengthen our capacity to respect human rights from the different roles we have as an employer, business owner, through to our investments. Our statement includes our initial plan from 2022 to 2025 and the steps we believe we should take. We are sure that we will learn a lot on the way and we invite our stakeholders to join us on this path.

Download our Human Rights Statement

Next to our engagement with managers we are also working with an engagement service provider that engages on the topic of Human rights and other relevant topics from both values and risk perspective. And, as part of our efforts to take action on human rights, we are also endorsing Advance, by the Principles for Responsible Investment – a stewardship initiative for investors to take action on human rights and social issues.

Anthos is proud to endorse the initiative, along with over 220 other investors with over $USD 30 trillion in assets under management. Find out more here: https://www.unpri.org/advance.