121 subsidiaries and five joint ventures declare compliance with the Code of Human Rights & Social Principles for 2020.
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 2021, the annual query for the previous year was carried out. 121 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 2020 for the period January 1st, 2020 to December 31st, 2020 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 becomes possible. The first question is aimed to identify human rights risks in the respective subsidiaries, in order to be able to take preventive measures. Since the outbreak of the Corona pandemic, many countries have experienced and continue to experience restrictions in private, public and professional contexts. Therefore, another question in the Human Rights and Social Performance Report refers to the focus of the basic human right "right to health". The question asked what measures the individual subsidiaries have taken. A detailed analysis can be found in the report.
