Respecting Human Rights

The Mitsubishi Chemical Group has established Global Policy on Respecting Human Rights, Employment and Labor as its specific human rights guideline in tandem with conveying to all Group members its basic approach to human rights in conformity with international norms such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Global Compact, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and ISO26000. Overseas Group companies endeavor to comply with the laws and regulations applicable to each country and best practices concerning human rights, and raise the satisfaction levels of employees, along with conducting appropriate value chain management in the course of expanding their business activities.

Recognition of Issues and Basic Approach

1. We shall respect the dignity and rights of all people in every aspect of our corporate activities, and never engage in unjustifiable discrimination whatever the circumstances, whether race, gender, religion, or any other reason.
2. In the promotion of specific enlightenment activities, each Group company shall set policies and priority issues in an autonomous fashion. We shall consistently put into practice activities aimed at becoming a corporate group that offers a pleasant work environment, makes employees motivated, is accepted by society, and has a highly developed awareness of human rights. At the same time, we shall seek to work together as a group.

Regulations

The Mitsubishi Chemical Group Global Policy on Respecting Human Rights, Employment and Labor

Our approach to share our principle of respecting human rights

The Mitsubishi Chemical Group has declared its commitment to respect human rights in the Global Policy on Respecting Human Rights, Employment, and Labor. With this policy, we continuously implement the following processes and prevent adverse impacts to meet responsibility. We also provide for their remediation if we identify that it has caused or contribute adverse impacts.

Process to share the principle of respecting human rights

1. Based on the concept of human rights due diligence, a process to identify, prevent, and mitigate adverse human rights impacts, we communicate with stakeholders to identify potential and actual adverse human rights impacts.
2. We assess the identified potential and actual adverse human rights impacts and our corporate activities.
3. We prevent and mitigate adverse human rights impacts and continuously track their effects through our corporate activities to realize KAITEKI.
4. We report these activities to stakeholders using the proper channels.

Our progress

Reducing the Risk of Human Rights Violations

As part of our Groupwide risk management activities, we conduct human rights due diligence to identify and assess human rights risks, systematically promote measures to reduce such risks, and verify said measures’ effectiveness. Our risk assessments and the details and effectiveness of our risk-reduction measures are widely shared internally. In addition to Groupwide measures, we address risks that are specific to the business operations of each organization and the regions in which they operate. The details, approaches, and standards of our measures are also shared with relevant stakeholders to ensure awareness of our commitment to human rights.
Respecting human rights is an important part of our internal control activities, and therefore we strive to reduce the risk of human rights violations through various means, such as incorporating the status of Group companies’ measures into our internal control assessments.

Structure

For information about the promotion structure for activities related to human rights, please see "Promotion Structure for Management of Sustainability (MOS)" on the Awareness and Responsibility webpage.

Sustainability approach and promotion structure

Development of hotline and consultation system

The MCG Group has established a compliance hotline, for which the respective internal control promotion departments of MCG and its main operating companies or external lawyers serve as points of contact. Furthermore, Mitsubishi Chemical has appointed an in-house “harassment counselor” and has a structure in place to receive consultation requests made and complaints filed in relation to harassment. In the event that any problem has been confirmed, we strive to take action and rectify the problem promptly.

Main Activities

Major human rights risks and status of responses (implementation of human rights due diligence)

Examples of Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation’s human rights initiatives

Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation implements a variety of human rights initiatives with the aim of realizing a sustainable supply chain.

Examples

• Regularly check the status of business partners’ activities to ensure that there are no cases of child labor and forced labor along the supply chain
• Provide training on human rights to enhance awareness of purchasing and procurement personnel
• Promote responsible procurement of minerals (Responsible Mineral Procurement)

We have established and are steadily implementing a system for human rights due diligence along the supply chain to fulfill our corporate responsibility to respect human rights.

Procurement