WWF considers the relationship between respect for human rights and the promotion of a healthy ecosystem to be mutually inclusive. Every human being has the right to enjoy a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, and a healthy environment is a necessary precondition for the fulfillment of many other human rights and human wellbeing.

Human Rights recur in various standards we commit to as an organisation. It forms part of our network’s core standards and applies to everything that we do in our network. In so doing, we respect and, to the best of our ability, protect the rights to expression and participation in relation to environmental matters, taking into account cultural and political contexts as necessary.

We are driven by 7 guiding principles:​

• Respect human rights
• Advocate for governments, as duty-bearers, to fulfill their obligations
• Promote human rights within our work
• Identify and mitigate negative human rights impacts
• Help protect the vulnerable
• Encourage good governance
• Support for rights holders
  

Next to the 7 guiding principles, we employ a human rights-based approach across all our work. We undertake assessments and other due diligence to understand human rights-related risks, both those specific to our activities and the wider social, economic, political, or other ‘contextual' factors that can influence our work. We seek to identify and mitigate any human rights risk that our field-based work may pose through the systematic application of the Environmental and Social Safeguards Framework. We engage and collaborate with communities to: 

• Understand their rights
• Ensure that the potential impacts of the intervention are understood
• Participate in decision-making.

In cases where there are possible impacts to Indigenous Peoples, we will ensure a process of free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) to interventions affecting the communities, or their lands, territories, and resources. We recognize the importance of conserving the cultures of the indigenous peoples and local communities, and we respect their right to a safe, clean, health and sustainable environment, their right to, access to information and participate in decision making. 

Information about WWF’s commitments on Human Rights can be found in several documents, including the WWF Policy Statement, the Network Implementation Arrangements of the ESSF, and our Response Protocol for Human Rights Abuses. These can be downloaded below.

WWF’s Environmental and Social Safeguards and Social Policies are extensive and cover many different topics. Below you can find six topics that are frequently searched for.