IGF 2024: A Rights-Respecting Approach to Emerging Tech Development

Join the Session: IGF Village Stage / Zoom (hybrid)

Organised by: The Netherlands, FOC Chair 2024, and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)

Opening Remarks: Rasmus Lumi, Director General of the Department of International Organizations and Human Rights, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia

Moderator: Radka Sibille, Digital Affairs Advisor, EU Delegation to the UN and other international organisations in Geneva

Speakers: 

• Brendan Dowling, Australia’s Ambassador for Cyber Affairs and Critical Technology
• Scott Campbell, Senior Human Rights Officer, OHCHR
• Roman Danyliw, Chair, IETF
• Ihueze Nwobilor, Senior Programmes Officer, Paradigm Initiative
• Alex Walden, Global Head of Human Rights, Google

Session Description:

In past years, we have witnessed a significant increase of conversations around emerging technologies, especially generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools and systems, in the public sphere, peaking in 2023 following the release of ChatGPT. Since then, there have been extensive deliberations on the way these technologies affect human rights, and what implications new developments may have in the future. Emerging technologies have the potential to significantly impact the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms as defined by the foundational documents for international human rights law , and pose both opportunities for development and economic and social benefit, as well as risks for enabling and scaling human rights violations and abuses.

Both governments and the private sector have a role to play in ensuring that the benefits of emerging technologies are harnessed, and the risks brought about by their design, development, deployment and use addressed, mitigated, and remedied. In line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, businesses have a responsibility to respect all internationally recognized human rights, avoiding infringing on the human rights of others and addressing adverse human rights impacts stemming from or linked to their business activities. This also extends to companies’ participation in technical standards-development. At the same time, states have obligations to protect and promote human rights, which applies to their involvement in standard-setting. As per the OHCHR’s report on Human rights and technical standard-setting processes for new and emerging digital technologies, technical standards can have crucial ramifications for human rights. Technical standards regulating digital technologies can generate human rights impacts in several ways, and there has been a growing body of work and research on this topic, including by OHCHR and civil society. However, more specific work is needed to understand the impact of technical standards on human rights in the context of AI systems, particularly with respect to embedded biases that lead to or facilitate discriminatory outcomes, or interfere with the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, privacy, access to information, and effective remedy.

This networking session will allow participants to explore the role of the private sector in ensuring a rights-respecting approach in developing emerging technologies, including generative AI tools and systems, as well as the role of governments in ensuring that the development and implementation of technical standards around these technologies is conducted in alignment with states’ obligation to protect and promote human rights, and avoid fragmentation of international standards.

The networking session will gather stakeholders that work on or have a role in technical standards development to also learn about and discuss human rights issues that arise in technical standards-setting, considering strategies for integrating human rights concerns and safeguards into technical standards for digital technologies. The networking format will allow speakers and participants to explore avenues for strategic cooperation on the development of technical standards for emerging technologies that is rooted in a multistakeholder approach, and outline existing tools and (legal) frameworks that can serve as guidelines. The outcome of the session will be a raised capacity of the participants on what responsibility each stakeholder group has to ensure the development of a rights-respecting emerging technology and how to utilise the UNGPs and the OHCHR technical standards report practically, as well as what impacts these technologies could have on human rights if they are not developed through a multistakeholder and human-rights approach and if international technical standards are fragmented. The outcomes of the session will be captured in a report, with concrete recommendations.