06/02/2025
At CapMan, we respect and promote human rights for all people, including our employees, partners, stakeholders in our investments, and local communities. Our commitment is to respect and promote human rights throughout our investments’ value chains and continuously improve our human rights governance.
To live up to this commitment, in 2023 we went back to basics by conducting a Salient Human Rights Risk Assessment across CapMan Group. Based on the results, we developed concrete roadmaps for CapMan’s operations, Real Estate investments and asset management, Infrastructure and Private Equity investment practices as well as practical guidance for SMEs and larger companies in our portfolios.
We adhere to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP), International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at work, as well the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. Additionally, as members of UN Global Compact, we are committed to its principles, actively promoting its fundamental values related to human rights, labour principles, the environment, and anti-corruption.
“As active owners, we hold a key position to implement a robust human rights due diligence across the value chains in our investments”
Anna Olsson, Head of Sustainability at CapMan.
In the long-term, we are committed to ensure:
- The respect and promotion of human rights throughout value chain, to track the effectiveness of our human rights due diligence and communicate on progress
To get there, on CapMan Group level, we are:
- Coordinating across the different CapMan departments to align all relevant policies, procedures and tools to international standards and upgrade the identification of any adverse human rights impacts, and assign a clear division of expectations and responsibilities
- Training Investment and operations teams on practical implications and requirements of the enhanced human rights due diligence (identifying adverse human rights impacts and implementing actions to cease, prevent, and mitigate those impacts)
- Strengthening remediation processes and comprehensive grievance mechanisms
- Improving the tracking of the effectiveness of the human rights due diligence implementation by introducing robust KPIs
- Engaging with external stakeholders to stay ahead of any developments regarding human rights expectations on businesses
- Enhancing our reporting on progress
These efforts are at various stages of implementation as we follow our roadmap.
On investment team and asset level, we are:
- Assisting Infrastructure and Private Equity portfolio companies in implementing a human rights roadmap aligned with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights that establishes a robust human rights due diligence and grievance mechanism, which reflect the individual circumstances of each portfolio company
- Tracking the implementation of and communicating the results of the roadmap
- Across our investment teams, we are embedding human rights into relevant policies, guidelines, processes and manuals, which also apply to external suppliers and partners (e.g. CapMan’s portfolio company policy library templates, investment process manual, Real Estate procurement policy, investment process manual, Real Estate construction manual, Real Estate refurbishment manual etc.)
- Engaging with stakeholders in the Real Estate high-risk sectors, such as construction (e.g. safety), hotels (e.g. prostitution, human trafficking), cleaning (e.g. labour practices), security (e.g. excessive force).
- Improving knowledge on human rights in real estate across the value chain
- Improving grievance mechanisms and strengthening whistleblower mechanisms
- Continuously learning about human rights, associated risks, and mitigation actions
The efforts are at various stages of implementation as we follow our roadmap.
What respecting and promoting human rights looks like at CapMan Real Estate
In practice, in real estate our commitment means requiring significant suppliers to comply with CapMan Supplier Code of Conduct, ensuring real estate specific policies and manuals cover human rights, and starting to screen the main human rights related risks during due diligence for new acquisitions and plan mitigative measures. The real estate team will initiate engagement with key stakeholders or suppliers in high risks sectors such as cleaning, construction, security and hotels.
As this work includes people from across CapMan functions, as well as external stakeholders, the manuals introduced are step-by-step guides that include clear division of responsibilities as well as expectations on outputs. The real estate team will continue improving its understanding of the direct and indirect salient human rights impacts and enhance the processes to mitigate human rights related risks in its value chain.
Read more about our latest achievements in sustainability and how we make things happen in the links located at the top right.
