This is a fantastic idea, Rebecca.
As you may know, some of us have been trying
to get free expression concerns as an officially recognized part of ICANN’s
agenda for some time (back to the beginning, in fact).
We learned during the new gTLD policy
making process (e.g., the “morality and public order” section) how difficult
that will be and we have learned that the
About a year ago, the CEO of Public
Interest Registry (.org) and I tried to get ICANN’s CEO (Twomey) to do
something similar regarding the IDN fast track for ccTLDs. We didn’t call it a
HR impact assessment but the intent was exactly the same. You can see what we
sent here: http://www.circleid.com/posts/88710_org_ncuc_internationalized_domain_names/
It will be interesting to see how far your
idea gets.
--MM
From: Non-Commercial
User Constituency [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Sent: Sunday, November 01, 2009
1:24 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [NCUC-DISCUSS] Human
rights impact assessment
Dear all,
Was good seeing people in
At our meeting on Tuesday I raised with Kurt Pritz the question of
whether a human rights impact assessment might be appropriate. He asked me to
e-mail him explaining the idea, which I have done. The same info I sent him is
below. I'll leave it to our councilors and the rest of the NCSG community to
decide whether this is something people want to pursue further.
Best,
Rebecca
As gTLD's and particularly IDN
gTLD's get rolled out there are tremendous number of unknowns about what will
happen. The unknowns regarding trademark and security are much discussed. Less
discussed are the unknowns regarding free expression rights for applicants
and their end registrants - particularly dissident organizations, exiled
democracy groups, or non-mainstream groups from authoritarian countries whose
governments might seek to prevent them from operating an IDN gTLD in that
country's native script, and/or maximize their chances of failure after the
application is approved, and/or track down and persecute individual registrants
of these particular gTLDs.
Human rights impact assessments are increasingly common in other industries like
the extractive and manufacturing industries, but for the ICT sector they are
very new. Some leading companies in the ICT sector are realizing that
they have a responsibility to make sure that the technical and operational
decisions they make don't have negative unintended consequences - or
implications that weren't sufficiently thought through in advance - for thehuman rights of their users and customers. I am a founding
member of the Global Network Initiative (globalnetworkinitiative.org), a global
multistakeholder initiative for free expression and privacy for the ICT
industry, launched last year. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have signed on and
we're talking to a range of other companies about joining. Member companies
commit to a set of bottom-line principles, and agree to an implentation
framework which includes a commitment to doing human rights assessments for new products and services particularly when
the rollout of said products/services includes markets where the definition of
"crime" is well known to include peaceful political speech. If ICANN
were a GNI member, the rollout of gTLD's and especially IDN gTLDs would fit the
criteria for a situation in which a human rightsassessment would be in order.
The GNI principles can be found here:
http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/principles/index.php
The Implementation Guidelines are here:
http://www.globalnetworkinitiative.org/implementationguidelines/index.php
The section about human rights assessments is exceprted below. Obviously it would be modified
given that ICANN's work of managing the DNS is unique, but it gives you an
idea. Given the public interest mandate of ICANN, it would seem that
commissioning an independent human rights assessment of the DAG would boost public
confidence and trust in ICANN's work. It would also help lay to rest a lot of
open questions. One would envision that such an assessment would include
specific in-depth scenarios for how the DAG's guidelines would play out for
different kinds of vulnerable/dissident/non-mainstream groups from a range of
countries.
·
Human Rights Impact Assessments
Participating companies will employ human rights impact assessments to
identify circumstances when freedom of expression and privacy may be
jeopardized or advanced, and develop appropriate risk mitigation strategies
when:
o
Reviewing and revising internal
procedures for responding to government demands for user data or content
restrictions in existing markets
o
Entering new markets, particularly
those where freedom of expression and privacy are not well protected.
o
Reviewing the policies, procedures
and activities of potential partners, investments, suppliers and other relevant
related parties for protecting freedom of expression and privacy as part of its
corporate due diligence process.
o
Designing and introducing new
technologies, products and services.
The human rights impact assessments will
be undertaken to different levels of detail and scope depending on the purpose
of the impact assessment. However,
participating companies should:
o
Prioritize the use of human rights impact assessments for markets, products, technologies and
services that present the greatest risk to freedom of expression and privacy or
where the potential to advance humanrights is
at its greatest.
o
Update human rights impact assessments over
time, such as when there are material changes to laws, regulations, markets,
products, technologies, or services.
o
Draw upon resources from human rights groups, government
bodies, international organizations and materials developed as part of this
multi-stakeholder process.
o
Include a consideration of relevant
local laws in each market and whether the domestic legal systems conform to
rule of law requirements.
o
Utilize learning from real life
cases and precedents.
o
Focus on potential partners,
investments, suppliers and other relevant related parties that are involved in
the participating company’s business in a manner that materially affects the
company’s role in respecting and protecting privacy and freedom of expression.
o
Incorporate the outputs of human rights impact assessments into other company processes, such as
corporate risk assessments and due diligence.
--
IMPORTANT: My
Open Society Fellow | Co-founder, GlobalVoicesOnline.org
Assistant Professor, Journalism & Media Studies Centre,
HK: +852-6334-8843
Mainland
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