"The NCP finds Telenor’s human rights due diligence related to Myanmar exit inadequate", 11 December 2025

The NCP has concluded that Telenor did not carry out due diligence in line with the OECD Guidelines in relation to the exit from Myanmar in 2022 and that the company should play a role in remediation.

In 2021, the Norwegian NCP accepted a submission from the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) on behalf of 474 civil society organisations with respect to the operations of Telenor Myanmar Ltd. The complaint concerns risk-based due diligence, stakeholder engagement and disclosure related to Telenor’s disengagement from Myanmar.

According to the complainants, Telenor had not conducted adequate human rights due diligence in relation to the sale of its operations in Myanmar. The complainants feared that Telenor’s user data would be shared with the military junta and used to engage in surveillance, persecute and arrest political opponents…

A final mediation session was planned … to discuss follow-up actions to the ICT ecosystem study, including a digital security relief mechanism. The session was cancelled due to too great distance between the parties, and the case was transferred back to the NCP for examination in the autumn of 2024. The NCP found that the remaining issues to be examined centred around two questions:

1. Did Telenor carry out due diligence in line with the Guidelines in relation to the exit from Myanmar?
2. Should Telenor play a role in remediation of adverse impacts, and if so, what role would be appropriate?

The NCP bases its examination on information submitted by both parties, the MoU, and information available in the public domain. The NCP has not included information that could not be shared between the parties. The NCP underlines that the main responsibility for the grave human rights violations in Myanmar lies with the military junta. The NCP acknowledges that Telenor identified and mitigated some serious human rights risks through its due diligence in relation to its disengagement from Myanmar. These were mainly related to the company’s employees.

The NCP concludes that Telenor did not carry out human rights due diligence commensurate to the severity and likelihood of all the adverse impacts with which the company was involved in in Myanmar shortly before and after the coup. It was not in accordance with the Guidelines to systematically prioritise one set of rightsholders in the due diligence, i.e. Telenor’s own employees.

The NCP has also found that Telenor’s ability to mitigate risks for all those who were seriously at risk most likely became more limited than it could have been if the human rights due diligence and risk assessments had included scenarios for sale of its activities in Myanmar...

See also: 'Telenor failed to respect human rights in Myanmar sale', SOMO, 11 December 2025