111 subsidiaries and five joint ventures declare compliance with the Code of Human Rights & Social Principles for 2021.
In 2011, the United Nations announced the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. These impose an explicit responsibility on companies to uphold and protect human rights. Deutsche Telekom AG is committed to fully respecting human rights and implemented an internal human rights due diligence process. This process includes both the Declaration of Principles on Human Rights, our "Code of Human Rights & Social Principles," and the effectiveness monitoring of all measures.
To ensure compliance with the Code at international level, Group subsidiaries and joint ventures are surveyed annually in a human rights & social performance report. With the aid of an automated tool, the managing directors or HR managers confirm that there were no violations of the Code in the previous year. In the event of non-compliance, the incidents must be reported immediately, and countermeasures must be initiated.
At the beginning of 2022, the annual query for the previous year was carried out. 111 subsidiaries and five joint ventures were surveyed on compliance with the "Code of Human Rights & Social Principles". As all companies surveyed confirmed compliance, the Human Rights and Social Performance Report 2021 for the period January 1st, 2021 to December 31st, 2021 recorded no violations.
In addition to this core element, the survey also contains two further substantive questions with human rights relevance. The aim of these questions is to actively address particularly relevant topics in the area of human rights. These include, for example, the topics of freedom of expression and non-discrimination. In addition, an international comparison and potential optimizations become possible. The first question is aimed to identify human rights risks in the respective subsidiaries, to be able to take preventive measures.
Deutsche Telekom AG stands for diversity as the newly published Group policy on diversity, equity and inclusion illustrates. Therefore, a further question refers in the human rights and social report to the basic principles to diversity, equity and inclusion. It was asked whether discrimination is seen as topic in the company and there are corresponding programs. A detailed analysis can be found in the report.
