Huawei

Huawei has a number of activities aimed at closing the digital gender gap, including training programmes and scholarships. The company also has several products catering to children with disabilities and those with hearing loss. It also contributes to digital access through a project that repurposes shipping containers into networked medical centres for remote communities in New Zealand, supporting real-time consultations with doctors and specialists.

Huawei’s TECH4ALL programme supports different levels of digital skills development. In Kenya, Huawei works with several global and local partners to provide classes to students in remote communities. The classes are delivered in converted shipping containers on wheels, equipped with laptops, virtual reality headsets and built-in Wi-Fi. Huawei also cooperates with the Bolivian government for the Seeds for the Future programme, aiming to improve the information and communications technology (ICT) skills of teachers across the country. Furthermore, the Huawei ICT Academy provides technical training, partnering with over 600 universities.

The company’s cybersecurity practices follow industry norms. It has clear policies on cybersecurity, including defining internal processes for dealing with security issues and having an incident response team and information security management certification.

Huawei has a high-level statement supporting open source initiatives and standards. It contributes to open source platforms and is a member of numerous open source communities. The company also shows evidence of using technology for sustainable purposes, such as cloud technology and sound monitoring to detect illegal logging.

Huawei has an opportunity to enhance disclosure of its access-related initiatives by reporting the number of people with disabilities it employs, as well as whether it works with people with disabilities to improve its products. The company should also demonstrate how the economic value it creates is distributed among its stakeholders.

Huawei has an opportunity to support intermediate digital skills development to fill the gap between its activities for basic and technical skills development. Additional metrics on its existing programmes, including third-party assessments, can help the company better understand and communicate programme impacts.

The company has an opportunity to make a high-level commitment to child online safety. No evidence was found that the company publishes a transparency report about government requests for its data. In contrast to the 2021 benchmark, no evidence was found that Huawei disclosed the number of data breaches it experienced.

Huawei has an opportunity to demonstrate support for social or non-profit start-ups. The company can also increase transparency regarding the diversity of its R&D activities by reporting the number of women it employs in R&D roles and the locations of its R&D facilities. While there is evidence of Huawei’s academic collaboration on AI ethics governance, no evidence was found of how the company considers ethics in product development.

Huawei does not have a comprehensive commitment to respect human rights. Furthermore, the company does not disclose a process to identify, assess and act on salient human rights risks in its own operations and in its business relationships. While the company has a grievance mechanism accessible to both workers and external stakeholders to raise human rights concerns and complaints, it is unclear if complainants are able to choose to remain anonymous.

Huawei publicly commits to respecting worker health and safety, and it places health and safety expectations on its business relationships. Nevertheless, it could report quantitative health and safety information for its workers, such as work-related injuries. The company publicly states an expectation for its business relationships to not require workers to work more than regular and overtime hours. However, it does not provide a similar public statement in relation to its own workers. In relation to workforce diversity, the company provides a breakdown of employees in different employee categories by age, gender and level of education. The company lacks disclosure on the topics of living wage and collective bargaining.

Huawei has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, and it includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its business relationship contracts. It also has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints on the topic. While the company reports a UK-specific tax strategy, it does not disclose a global tax strategy. Nor does it disclose its income tax payments in individual tax jurisdictions. Huawei specifies that it does not make political contributions, but it does not disclose its approach to lobbying and political engagement or its lobbying expenditures.