AFD // 2021 Universal Registration Document

STATEMENT OF NON-FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE Managing the risks and impacts of our action

environmental risks. This assessment is also based on the World Bank’s environmental, health and safety Directives, and the harmonised EDFI standards (1) which define due diligence requirements by referring mainly to the IFC performance standards and the ILO core labour standards, but also to the Voluntary Principles on Safety and Human Rights and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The application of these standards in its reasonable due diligence enables Proparco to address human rights issues. To further strengthen respect for human rights and manage the risks that may arise from its activities, in 2021, Proparco, together with its peers of the EDFI association, actively participated in the development of operational tools enabling its employees to better integrate the human rights dimension throughout the project cycle. Since 2019, the complaints management mechanism set up at Proparco (together with its counterparts DEG and FMO) completes and strengthens the operational system by offering affected people an independent channel to collect and process their complaints (see above). The financing agreements signed with partners and recipients must necessarily mention the commitments made by counterparties to respect the rights of individuals potentially affected, and reiterate compliance with the ILO’s fundamental conventions and the SFI’s standards, in such a manner as to make them legally binding. For the AFD Group, the integration of human rights issues is an ongoing process of learning and sharing best practices through participation in the working groups of bilateral and multilateral partners dedicated to the subject, and through exchanges within the Group that make it possible to develop employees’ knowledge of the subject and improve due diligence practices.

P the rights of indigenous populations; P environmental rights, in particular concerning the preservation of ecosystems, the prevention of pollution, ɸ etc. Where applicable, the implementation of these standards is accompanied by the establishment, by project managers, of mechanisms to manage complaints at project level, making it possible to collect and process potential complaints frompeople affected by these projects. The financing agreements signed with recipients must necessarily mention the commitments made by counterparties to respect the rights of individuals potentially affected, and reiterate the compliance with the ILO’s fundamental conventions in such a manner as to make them legally binding. Various training courses are offered to Group employees to support them in taking human rights into account in project financing, in understanding the contexts of intervention, and more generally in reinforcing internal capacities. As part of the French Human Rights and Development Strategy and the associated action plan validated at the end of 2020, AFD is developing a digital training programme which consists of five modules entirely dedicated to the theme of “Human rights and development” and to the human rights-based approach in cooperation projects. This multimodal educational project combines synchronous and asynchronous formats. These modules are gradually being made available to all Group employees (AFD, Proparco and Expertise France), both at the head office and in the network. In 2021, two “Human rights and development” training modules were developed and posted online, and are available on AFD’s e-training platform. Proparco follows the same appraisal procedures for each operation, which must include the assessment of social and

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(1) Association of European Development Financial Institutions.

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2021 UNIVERSAL REGISTRATION DOCUMENT