Do human rights come into the picture when technology and policy work are involved? If so, where?

This is a question that has come up multiple times during the last dozen years, and occasionally even before, in Internet Governance discussions. These discussions have included debates on whether human rights were specifically applicable to protocol design or to the organizations developing protocol standards. It is still being debated and is becoming more of a central issue. Some might argue that human rights policy and technical design are separate realms that should not be conflated. Some argue that any protocol that can’t be shown to be consistent with human rights should not be allowed to be part of the Internet unless it can be regulated. Some argue that neither of these extreme positions will do. One basic perspective taken in discussion is that while human rights declarations and policy define what should be done, technology defines what can be done, and the global market will define what actually gets done. Understanding how these various perspectives fit together becomes important.

In the article Human Rights and Standards Development Organizations, Avri Doria, an Advisor to Layer 9 Technologies with experience in both human rights and Internet technology, delves into the recent undertakings of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’ report (OHCHR Report) on the importance of Standards Development Organizations embedding human rights in their work on emerging technologies and AI.

Her article looks at some of the background circumstances that led to the release of the report “Human rights and technical standard-setting processes for new and emerging digital technologies” Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to the Human Rights Council” (OHCHR Report). With the advent of the pervasive nature of social media, and its effects on most every aspect of society, concern among users and the governments that they are subject to has brought the issue to the fore. Now with AI causing additional concerns, and in some cases fear, in many sectors of society, the role of human rights in developing new technology is increasingly being discussed in many fora. The degree to which rights respecting approaches to technology and to the business of technology are being discussed made it useful for the OHCHR to bring the discussions together in a cogent manner.

Secondly, the article gives an overview of the content of the OHCHR Report. The report itself looks at the current landscape of technical standards setting, breaking down the various types of standards development organizations and giving definitions that help illuminate the landscape. The article then goes on to discuss the relevance of technical standards and human rights to each other and the challenges that are encountered in the standards setting process when attempting to take human rights into account. The report ends with a set of considerations, mitigations and recommendations that are applicable to each of the defined stakeholder groups. This is done within the context of the Human Rights Guiding Principles.

Finally, the article looks at some of the ongoing work of some Internet-related SDOs and the uptake of the report over the last year. Both the work of Intergovernmental Organizations and of Technical Community organizations are covered briefly in the article.

One theme that runs through the article is the acknowledgement of the importance of the issue and the indication that the work in the SDOs began before the OHCHR Report was published. While various SDOs are already working on the issue, some are mentioned in the OHCHR Report, and are trying to understand how to meet the requirements of human rights, the report also serves as input to policy makers. While in some sense an old topic, human rights and protocols is now an active topic of discussion and will remain so moving into the future. A recommendation in both the OHCHR Report and the Layer 9 article on the report in the current environment, is the need to come to basic understanding about both the human rights impact on the work done to improve technology, and the impact of the technology, its development, and its deployment on the human rights due to Internet users. Without serious attention to Human Rights Impact Analyses (HRIA), it may be difficult to pin down the relationship between technology and human rights, and to ensure the best possible human rights experience for people when living in our evolving technologically driven world.