RightsCon Toronto 2018

The majority of the Internet’s infrastructure is developed, operated, and maintained by private actors—Internet Service Providers (ISPs), registries, registrars, hosting providers, Internet exchange points, and content delivery networks, to name a few. Collectively, these companies have the power to safeguard the rights of end-users, or to propagate human rights abuses through their services and technologies. While some Internet infrastructure providers have begun to acknowledge their influence, the majority of these companies have yet to take concrete steps toward aligning their policies and practices with international human rights standards.

Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIAs) are a useful tool in this context, intended to inform private actors of their potential impacts as well as provide concrete avenues toward mitigating negative effects. While there are systematic steps for conducting these HRIAs on transnational corporations in many fields, no such formula have been developed for examining the impacts of Internet infrastructure providers and other related companies… until now.

Drawing from case studies and ongoing efforts to jointly develop and implement HRIAs for Internet infrastructure providers, this Skills Seminar seeks to begin filling this gap by improving existing HRIA models to the specific functioning of technical Internet actors, and identifying new sectors that could benefit from this practice. Civil society, technical operators, and business actors alike are encouraged to join the conversation.