Veon

Veon contributes to bridging the gender digital divide through its Pakistani subsidiary’s Jazz Smart School Programme, which trains women teachers to use tech for teaching middle school girls. The company also follows best practice by disclosing the number of people it employs in each of its countries of operation.

Veon, through its subsidiary Beeline Kyrgyzstan, teaches students mobile etiquette and online security, and provides educational and personal development apps and media literacy. The programme reaches more than 16,000 pupils across 80 schools nationwide.

Veon reports its data breaches and applies the same privacy principles across all its countries of operation.

Veon supports the tech innovation ecosystem through venture capital and start-up incubators in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Veon can report its financial contribution and participation and impact metrics for its digital access programmes. It can also commission a third party to assess the impact of these programmes. Further, the company can provide evidence of how it integrates accessibility features into its services. Veon should also report how the economic value it generates is distributed among its stakeholders and the taxes it pays in its countries of operation.

Veon can provide more details around the financial and non-financial contributions it makes to its existing programmes and the impacts achieved.

Veon can better demonstrate senior-level accountability for cybersecurity and how it manages information security. It also has an opportunity to report the number of government requests it receives for personal information. Further, Veon should make a high-level commitment to child online safety and implement activities in this area across the group.

Veon has an opportunity to demonstrate its approach to open, sustainable, inclusive and ethical innovation. For example, it can collaborate with universities on technology and sustainability research topics. Furthermore, the company can report how many women it employs in research and development (R&D) roles, and how it applies ethics in its R&D activities.

Veon commits to respecting human rights and has a grievance mechanism accessible to both workers and external stakeholders to raise human rights concerns and complaints. However, the company does not commit to respecting the ILO core labour 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. Veon also does not engage with stakeholders whose human rights could be impacted by its operations.

Veon publicly commits to respecting worker health and safety, and it places health and safety expectations on its business relationships. The company also discloses the proportion of its workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements. However, it does not specify that it does not require workers to work more than regular and overtime hours. It also provides no relevant information in reference to providing its workers a living wage. Veon provides a breakdown of employees in different employee categories by gender and age group and commits to promoting women’s empowerment and gender equality.

Veon does not disclose any relevant information in relation to tax, such as a global tax strategy or its income tax payments in individual tax jurisdictions. Further, the company states that it does not make political contributions. However, it does not disclose its overarching approach to lobbying and political engagement in a publicly available policy statement. Veon does, however, have a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption, and it includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its business relationship contracts. Additionally, the company has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints on the topic.