WSIS+20 Forum: The Impact of Technical Standards on Human Rights in the case of Digital Technologies

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: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). They greatly affect economic development and might bring economic and social benefits, but also pose both opportunities as well as risks for further 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 the design, development, deployment and the use of these technologies avoided, addressed, mitigated, and remedied. This reality has also been recognized in UN resolutions, such as UNGA Resolution A/Res/78/213 on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in the Context of Digital Technologies. 

Under 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 the development and implementation of technical standards. At the same time, states have obligations to respect, protect and fulfil 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 reflect the interests, values and concerns of those participating in their elaboration, with crucial ramifications for human rights. Technical standards for the Internet and 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, academia and civil society organizations. However, given the complexity of the topic, more understanding is needed about the nature and extent of the linkages between technical standards and human rights impacts in the context of emerging technologies, including with respect to embedded biases that lead to or facilitate discriminatory outcomes, or interfere with the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, privacy, access information, and effective remedy. 

This session will highlight 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 are conducted in alignment with states’ obligation to respect, protect and fulfil human rights. The session will consider strategies for integrating human rights concerns and safeguards into the technical standards development process, building on the interlinkages between the multi-stakeholder approach to the governance of the Internet and digital technologies and a human rights-based approach to such governance. These interlinkages were explicitly highlighted in the Outcome Document of the multi-stakeholder conference NETmundial+10, held on April 29th and 30th 2024. 

This session is a precursor to a more in-depth, dedicated session, co-organized by the Freedom Online Coalition under the Chairship of the Netherlands, at the IGF in December 2024, pending acceptance of the proposal, in which some of the outcomes of this session can be taken forward.