As part of our previous membership of the GNI, we committed to implement the GNI Principles, putting concrete measures in place to protect and advance freedom of expression and the right to privacy.
All GNI companies undergo an independent assessment of their implementation of the Principles every two years, to demonstrate their efforts in practice. We started preparations for our first independent assessment in August 2018 by setting up a team of senior level experts from across the business and across our operating markets to participate in the required interviews, evidence collection and report writing. We continued this work until the March 2019 Board review meeting, working together with our independent assessor, who reviewed our processes, policies and the governance model that we use to safeguard our users’ rights to freedom of expression and privacy, to ensure all relevant areas were covered.
Vodafone completed its first formal GNI assessment in March 2019 during which the Board reviewed a detailed report on Vodafone and determined that we are making good faith efforts to implement the GNI Principles with improvement over time.
In 2022 we completed our second independent assessment. The multi-stakeholder GNI Board considered the independent assessment in detail and determined that Vodafone is making good faith efforts to implement the GNI Principles on freedom of expression and privacy with improvement over time. Following the completion of our 2022 assessment, we chose to leave GNI in order to focus our attention on our broader human rights risks and governance and controls at Group level. Simultaneously, Vodacom has applied for Observer status at GNI to take increased ownership of human rights risk management across our Africa footprint.