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Businesses in Ukraine

The services of Rakuten Viber, Rakuten TV, Rakuten Viki, Rakuten Advertising, and Rakuten (open e-commerce platform), which are also offered in other countries, are available in Ukraine.

Businesses in Russia

The only service offered in Russia is Rakuten Viber.

Rakuten Group's Response to the Humanitarian Crisis in Ukraine

• Rakuten Group will continue to ensure the safety of its local employees.
• Rakuten has been accepting donations for the Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis Emergency Relief Fund [...] since February 28. We also launched a t-shirt donation drive to provide humanitarian aid to Ukraine on March 11. [...]
• In support of users in Ukraine, Russia and throughout the region, we have initiated a program for free Viber Out calls, allowing users to reach any phone number, landline or mobile, in 34 countries around the world. We have taken strong steps to combat disinformation and are actively promoting sources of truth on the platform. We also want to be absolutely clear that Viber is not sharing and will never share information with any government about their citizens’ lawful and free speech activities. Finally, we have removed all advertising in Ukraine and Russia from the Viber app to ensure that no one will profit from activity on our app at this time. For more details, visit here.

Rakuten Group's Efforts to Ensure Stakeholders’ Human Rights

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[...] the Rakuten Group Human Rights Policy was adopted in 2019 [...]. As part of the Policy implementation, Rakuten conducts human rights due diligence in accordance with the procedures outlined in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP). It includes four key steps: Identifying and assessing adverse impacts on human rights, taking measures to prevent and mitigate adverse impacts, tracking and verifying the effectiveness of those measures, and disclosing and communicating information.

A new human rights impact assessment was launched in 2020 as part of our due diligence process led in collaboration with external experts. It is a preliminary study aimed at understanding the overall human rights risks relevant to Rakuten’s operations, business activities, products and services, and identifying human rights issues to be addressed as priority. As a result, eight issues have been identified as Rakuten Group’s salient human rights issues, helping to clarify which areas require further investigation. The assessment also identified short-term risk mitigation measures to be taken, such as employee training and governance improvements. This result will continue to be refined through regular reviews in response to the development of our business and changes in society.

For more details on human rights issues salient to Rakuten and how we are continuously working to avoid prevent and mitigate them, please visit here.