Salient Human Rights Issues

Identifying and Assessing Salient Human Rights Issues

While remaining focused on all human rights issues under the Human Rights Policy, Mizuho identifies salient human rights issues and assesses their severity, likelihood and relevance which includes attribution and leverage within the framework of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). We will continue reviewing and refreshing our salient human rights issues on an ongoing basis, to account for the changing business environment inside and outside Japan.

Objective and Overview

• We identified salient human rights issues in Mizuho’s business activities in line with the UNGPs and refreshed this list based on the diversification and aggravation of human rights issues resulting from the changing business environment.
• We addressed a human rights impact assessment with advice from an external expert, covering the issues facing financing and investment clients, Mizuho Group companies, and financial service recipients and providers, to measure the severity, likelihood and relevance of their impacts on human rights.
• Compared with our previous human rights issues map revised in May 2022, new issue types were added, and some existing issues were further segmented in line with our business context. We also clarified our action plans to address each of the issues taking into consideration their relevance to our business.

 

Assessment Process

Assessment Results

• We identified 15 salient human rights issues by scoring and evaluating the severity, likelihood and relevance of associated human rights impacts.

 

• We are engaging with stakeholders on all salient human rights issues and striving to enhance our management initiatives.

Human Rights Issues Map

We conducted a scoring assessment of each human right issue based on the severity, likelihood and relevance of associated impacts with advice from an external expert.