Fortis fully respects and supports internationally recognised human rights within our sphere of influence. We are determined never to be complicit in the abuse of those rights. To support this stance, we are currently fi nalising the Fortis Human Rights Statement, which will express our commitment to respect and promote human rights in accordance with internationally recognised conventions.

The issue of human rights can appear abstract and disconnected from our everyday business. What's more, the relationship between human rights and business responsibility is evolving all the time. That's why we have developed an internal implementation guide to help Fortis's management and employees put our Human Rights Statement into practice in 2008. The guide will show them how to deal with human rights issues and how, when and where to look for solutions.

In defining the scope of our Human Rights Statement, we identified four categories of stakeholders. Our degree of responsibility towards these stakeholders and their human rights can vary considerably. It depends on their position within our sphere of influence, which need not be static: it can be affected by changing, new or newly discovered information. This in turn can affect the level of our responsibility and risk of complicity.