Human Rights

Identify and assess actual and potential adverse human rights impacts we may cause in our operations. This is achieved by understanding the specific implications for people in particular contexts. The assessment covers our existing operations, value chain (suppliers, customers) and new business relations (M&A, joint ventures).

Prevent or mitigate potential impacts through the integration of assessment findings across the business enterprise, while implementing remediation measures for actual impacts.

Ensure our policy is optimally being implemented by tracking and verifying the effectiveness of measures. This is done by verifying that human rights impacts are effectively and swiftly responded to with available solutions.

Demonstrate our human rights commitment, create opportunities to communicate with our stakeholders and transparently disclose information on how we respond to human rights issues.

Created a list of potential human rights risks based on four key inputs;

• Desk research
• Stakeholder interviews
• Internal document review
• Inclusion of external expertise

Evaluated the salience of each identified risk based on four criteria, from low to high;

Scope
How many people are affected and what is the scope of influence?

Scale
How grave would the impact be?

Remediability
Will a remedy restore the victim to the same or equivalent position before the impact?

Likelihood
What is the likelihood of the risk or opportunity occurring, considering the context and business relationships?

Assigned a priority level for each risk to determine the most urgent issues to be addressed;

Tier 1

• Risks that need to be addressed urgently
• High in severity and likelihood
• Vulnerable groups are likely to be affected (or past relevant cases could be identified)

Tier 2

• Risks that need to be addressed while they are relatively low in priority
• Moderate severity and constant (not too high) likelihood

Tier 3

• Risks that need to be addressed while they are not urgent
• Relatively low in severity and likelihood

Foster fair, healthy working conditions for all workers in Rakuten's supply chain. This includes workers' right to time off, reasonable working hours, fair wages, freedom of association and collective bargaining.
Chains of suppliers can be complex and often span multiple countries with different legal and human rights practices. While these complex global supply chains support Rakuten's services and products, they also potentially present human rights risks.

Foster fair, healthy working conditions for all employees of Rakuten. This includes fair wages and benefits appropriate to country living standards, reasonable working hours and periodic paid holidays, adequate rest time and zero harassment at the workplace.
Rakuten’s workforce is increasing and becoming more diverse. Fostering fair, healthy working conditions where the human rights of all employees are respected is essential.

The ILO defines forced or compulsory labor as all work or service extracted under the menace of any penalty and for which the person has not voluntarily offered themselves. Practices that can be considered indicators of forced or compulsory labor include confinement of workers to the workplace or a limited area, debt bondage, withholding wages or excessive wage reduction that violates previously made agreements, retention of passports and personal documents, and forced overtime work. In the case of Japan, special attention should be paid to migrant workers with the status of residence under the "Program of Technical Intern Training for Foreign Nationals" or "Specified Skilled Worker System".
Child labor is work performed by under-age children, depriving a child of the chance to obtain an education and damaging a child's development. ILO standards prohibit hazardous work for all persons under 18 years of age, and labor for those under 15, with limited exceptions.
As a company engaged in electronics services worldwide through its mobile and e-reader businesses, we consider forced and child labor critical as it is often highlighted in the electronics industry's supply chain both in production and raw materials mining and extraction.

Innovation lies at the core of everything we do at Rakuten. We develop cutting-edge technologies to provide state-of-the-art products to our customers. Still, the design and use of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), cloud and network services and big data analytics have been documented to affect individuals' right to non-discrimination. The solutions we create may carry risks in ways that contradict our original intent and exacerbate human rights violations. If such potential use cases are not adequately anticipated and accounted for during the design and development phases, they can cause harm to our stakeholders’ rights.

The right to privacy is guaranteed by Article 12 of the UDHR, which states, "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation".

Rakuten provides several contact points for affected stakeholders to raise concerns and seek justice. See "Grievance Mechanism" on this page for details.

The harm derived from products and services, such as intentional or unintentional misuse, can potentially violate human rights. While our services and products are designed and developed to empower and enrich our partners' and customers' lives, we recog nize that they risk unintentionally contributing to or driving human rights abuses.