About this tool

This tool is designed to support direct real estate investors to conduct human rights due diligence by helping them to better identify and assess potential human rights risks and impacts in their investments and their value chains.

The downloadable tool complements our technical guide for private markets investors on conducting human rights due diligence, which provides a framework for investors to take action in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).

The ‘Resources’ tab in the tool provides an extensive list of external resources that users can filter by human rights issue and sector.

Human rights risk assessment

Our tool breaks down how to identify and assess human rights risks, across two main elements:

  • Sector risks
  • Company/project and value chain risks

We also include limited consideration of country risk within the tool. However, assessing country risk is a complex and dynamic process and often requires ongoing expert input and/or support. As such, investors may wish to factor other elements into their country risk analysis as they use the tool.

Who should use the tool?

The tool is intended for use by investors in real estate companies or properties.

It may have different use cases depending on the investor’s knowledge of human rights, the particular structure of any investment or project, and the different stage of the investment process and/or project lifecycle. Core uses of the tool include:

  • Identifying priority human rights issues and risks associated with investments in different real estate sectors, whether during pre-transaction or project due diligence, or for ongoing monitoring and asset management purposes.
  • Considering where in the investment value chain priority human rights issues and risks may fall, both geographically, and in terms of who may own the risks (whether the investor directly, at the investment or project level, or contractors and suppliers and so on).
  • Assessing the extent to which priority human rights issues and risks are managed in line with good practice, identifying potential actions to address any gaps.
  1. In the Toolkit tab, select the sector, project lifecycle stage, and whether Indigenous communities are present in the location of the investment. This will generate an initial set of potential human rights issues for the chosen combination.
    Please note: we recommend selecting only one sector at a time. To clear any selections, click on the red cross in the top right hand corner of the respective columns.

    screenshot_toolkit_crop

  2. Users who have previously conducted a human rights materiality assessment can select those issues from the table in the top right of the screen. To select multiple issues, click on the Multi-select icon at the top of the table.

    screenshot_toolkit_multi

    Again, to clear any selections, click on the red cross in the top right hand corner of the column.
  3. Once the initial filters have been selected, users can go into the tool. Start by answering the questions in columns E and F.
    Users can either manually input a ’yes’ or ‘no’ answer to those questions, or select the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ option when a dropdown box appears when clicking on the appropriate cell (this dropdown box may appear at the side, top or bottom of the row in question). 
  4. The yes/no answers to column E and F will automatically generate a coloured cell for that row in Column H.

    Screenshot_DD_tool


    A green cell indicates that this issue may not be a priority for further action for this particular investment. However, users may still use the checklist in column I to help identify how they (or associated risk owners) are managing risks related to the human rights issue.
    Dark orange cells indicate that this issue may be a greater priority for further action for this particular investment. For these issues, users are actively encouraged to use the checklist in column I to assess current policies and practices and identify potential areas for further action.
  5. Finally, users can use the checklist (column N) and checkbox (column O) as a means to assess how potential human rights risks are being managed by the respective risk owners. Users can use the checkbox in column O to indicate whether the non-exhaustive list of policies and/or processes included in column N are being implemented. Any gaps in the checkboxes may indicate core areas of focus for investors.
  6. Please note that users may need to double-click on cells in column N to see the full text.

Next steps

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) state that investors have a three-part responsibility to respect human rights:

  1. Establish a policy commitment
  2. Conduct due diligence
  3. Enable or providing access to remedy.

The UNGPs state that investors should prioritise action according to either the severity of potential impacts on stakeholders and/or the leverage that investors have to change the practices that contribute to or cause harm. The concepts of severity and leverage are also closely linked to the financial materiality of such risks for investors.

Users can assess human rights policies and practices and identify where in the investment value chain the most severe human rights impacts may occur. The tool then helps investors understand where they may begin to take action, whether directly or through engagement (or other mechanisms) with relevant stakeholders.

Example: A real estate investor is developing a residential project in the US.

Key issues may include the need for community engagement and managing worker health and safety. Both issues are likely to be subject to strong regulatory requirements, and so the investor may need to take little action beyond ensuring that those regulatory requirements are adequately enforced. However, forced labour and high security risks may be considered a risk in the sourcing of certain materials for the project. Here, the investor may take different steps:

  • Require that supplier due diligence and audits are conducted.
  • Implement codes of conduct and/or human rights-related clauses in contractual terms with suppliers.
  • Join industry initiatives to support greater transparency and accountability within the supply chain.
  • Develop escalation plans and/or remediation procedures in the case of negative human rights impacts.

Each investment and investor’s circumstances are different: how such measures are implemented will ultimately depend on the different risk owners in any investment, and what the investor considers to be the most effective way(s) to engage with those risk owners to effect change.

Our 2023 technical guide provides more details on how investors can take action to prevent and mitigate negative human rights impacts.

Download the tool (XSLX) below.

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