Session
Human Rights & Freedoms
Technology in International Human Rights Law
Organizer 1: Cathrine Bloch Veiberg, 🔒Danish Institute for Human Rights
Speaker 1: Cathrine Bloch Veiberg, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 2: Jason Pielemeier, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 3: Dunstan Allison-Hope, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Dunstan Allison-Hope, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Cathrine Bloch Veiberg, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Cathrine Bloch Veiberg, Technical Community, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Debate - 60 Min
A. How can HRDD efforts be informed by local context, stakeholder engagement, and a holistic understanding of the operating ecosystem of a company?
B. How can the implementation of emerging requirements for HRDD take an ecosystem approach?
C. What opportunities exist for cross-industry and cross-stakeholder collaboration around HRDD?
What will participants gain from attending this session? In this session, the participants will be able to explore the implementation of emerging regulatory developments around HRDD and risk assessment, and explore ways to use the Across the Stack Human Rights Due Diligence Tool in this endeavor.
Description:
Longstanding frameworks for responsible business conduct, including the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, and the GNI Principles on Freedom of Expression and Privacy, make clear that businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights in their activities and throughout their value chains and are centered around the concept of human rights due diligence (HRDD).
In recent years, tech companies, civil society, academics, and governments have developed more detailed, tech-specific HRDD guidance and tools - some based on particular sectors, others tailored to specific risk environments. This move toward more granular and modular approaches to HRDD coincides with a parallel move by governments to regulate tech sector activities, including detailed requirements for tech companies to undertake mandatory risk assessments and transparency reporting.
Under the Action Coalition for Responsible Technology, part of the Danish Government’s Tech for Democracy Initiative, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), Global Network Initiative (GNI), the OHCHR Business and Technology Project - B-tech, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR), have developed several resources to support more rights respective decision making across the digital ecosystem. A central resource is the “Across the Stack Human Rights Due Diligence Tool,” developed by GNI and BSR, which provides a broad mapping of the technology ecosystem to identify relevant overlaps and intersections between different technologies and actors and help identify and address high level human rights issues and due diligence “questions”. The tool was inspired by the understanding that technology and human rights challenges are system-wide and coordinated action may be needed to address risks or impacts. The tool also recognizes the role that different stakeholders play in the ecosystem and their impact on human rights including investors, governments and regulators, standard setting organizations, inter-governmental organizations, users, non-rights holders, CSOs, and the media.
The session will support in further refining the Across the Stack Human Rights Due Diligence Tool, and support in expanding on resources to explore the implementation of emerging regulatory developments around HRDD and risk assessment.
Hybrid Format: The session moderator will be responsible for involving all speakers in the debate - both online and in person. The speakers will be asked to provide short introductions followed by open questions and debate led by the moderator with both online and in person participant option to ask questions.