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:
- Reviewing and revising internal procedures for responding to government demands for user data or content restrictions in existing markets
- Entering new markets, particularly those where freedom of expression and privacy are not well protected.
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.
- Update human rights impact assessments over time, such as when there are material changes to laws, regulations, markets, products, technologies, or services.
- Draw upon resources from human rights groups, government bodies, international organizations and materials developed as part of this multi-stakeholder process.
- Include a consideration of relevant local laws in each market and whether the domestic legal systems conform to rule of law requirements.
- Utilize learning from real life cases and precedents.
- 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.
- Incorporate the outputs of human rights impact assessments into other company processes, such as corporate risk assessments and due diligence.

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Rebecca MacKinnon
Open Society Fellow | Co-founder, GlobalVoicesOnline.org
Assistant Professor, Journalism & Media Studies Centre, University of Hong Kong

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