30 November 2021, 10:25-11:40
Event
Chris Yang, Unplash
The state duty to protect against human rights abuses by business, including from the tech sector, requires states to adopt appropriate measures to prevent and address such abuses.
According to Pillar I of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) – which reflects human rights obligations that states have under international human rights law –, states should consider the ‘full range of permissible preventative and remedial measures, including policies, legislation, regulations and adjudication’. Therefore, the UNGPs provide a useful roadmap for governments in addressing technology-related human rights issues. Through a smart-mix of measures, the state has a critical role in ensuring good corporate conduct, facilitating multi-stakeholder engagement, and driving the corporate responsibility to respect through measures that foster the uptake of human rights due diligence among technology companies.
As regulatory efforts to require technology companies to respect human rights intensify worldwide, the OHCHR B-Tech project and the Geneva Academy are consulting on the idea of a so-called ‘UNGPs check’. Aimed at guiding the legislative process and at informing the design of tech regulation to foster rights-respecting regulatory frameworks, it would serve as a tool to inform engagement with policymakers.
This panel at the 2021 United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights – co-organized with OHCHR B-Tech project – will:
Panelists will notably address the following questions:
This event forms part of our research project on disruptive technologies and rights-based resilience – funded by the Geneva Science-Policy Interface – that aims at supporting the development of regulatory and policy responses to human rights challenges linked to digital technologies.
Tijana Kukanjac is enrolled in our LLM in International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. She tells about her background, the programme and what it will bring to her career.
Christian Lue, Unplash
As the EU is revising its legislation on seed marketing, the Geneva Academy is inputting this process to ensure that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and its article 19 on the right to seeds are taken into account.
Eypert Infantry
This conference, organized with the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue, will address the adverse implications for the enjoyment of human rights caused by environmental degradation in armed conflicts.
Markus Spiske, Unsplash
This online bilingual workshop, held in English and Italian, aims to raise awareness about the upcoming changes to the European Union (EU) seed marketing legislation and what this reform means in the Italian context.
Dustan Woodhouse, Unplash
This training course will explore the major international and regional instruments for the promotion of human rights, as well as with their implementation and enforcement mechanisms; and provide practical insights into the different UN human rights mechanisms pertinent to advancing environmental issues and protecting environmental human rights defenders.
CCPR Centre
This project examined how IHL could be more systematically, appropriately and correctly dealt with by the human rights mechanisms emanating from the UN Charter, as well as from universal and regional treaties.
CCPR Centre
The Geneva Human Rights Platform collaborates with a series of actors to reflect on the implementation of international human rights norms at the local level and propose solutions to improve uptake of recommendations and decisions taken by Geneva-based human rights bodies at the local level.