Human Rights

Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings and respect for human rights is a common requirement the world over.

As our business continues to expand globally, public interest in human rights and environmental issues has been rising in many countries and regions.

In 2011, the United Nations approved the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights ("UN Guiding Principles"), which sets out the corporate responsibility to respect human rights.

Companies are now expected to not only work to prevent and address human rights harms in connection with their own operations and employees, but also to avoid contributing or being linked to adverse human rights impacts caused by customers or suppliers in their value chain.

As a global financial services provider, we recognize that we have the ability to affect change in the business partners in our value chain. In some cases, we are in position to take positive actions to reduce adverse impacts of human rights.

At Mizuho, we established a Human Rights Policy in 2018 as part of our commitment to respecting internationally recognized human rights, and we have been working proactively to address a variety of human rights issues. 

In light of the recent increase in recognition of the importance of ensuring respect for human rights and the changes in human rights issues for financial institutions and global corporations, we undertook a review of human rights issues of the highest concern to Mizuho, and we revised our Human Rights Policy in May 2022. With this policy, we are aiming to establish a value chain respecting human rights. This entails not only ensuring understanding among our employees, but also deepening mutual understanding with all of our clients and suppliers through dialogue (engagement). Such cooperation and collaboration is the cornerstone of strengthening our human rights due diligence.

When establishing and revising our Human Rights Policy, to fulfill our responsibilities in the area of respecting human rights, we reviewed the issues involved to decide on specific actions and priority initiatives and sought the advice of various stakeholders including specialists and experts who have expert knowledge and business experience in the field of human rights.

Since 2022, we have been publishing Human Rights Report, compiling details on our initiatives for respecting human rights, based on the United Nations Guiding Principles Reporting Framework in order to provide for accountability to our stakeholders and enhance our transparency in regard to our initiatives for respecting human rights (Human Rights Report 2023 (PDF/3,653KB)).