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AfP's Digital Peacebuilding Community of Practice: Conflict-Sensitive Human Rights Due Diligence for Tech Companies

  • 1800 Massachusetts Ave NW Suite 401 Washington, DC United States (map)

On Thursday, January 19th at 11am ET, join AfP's Digital Peacebuilding Community of Practice for a conversation with Jennifer Easterday (formerly with Justpeace Labs) and Ayesha Khan (Technology and Human Rights Manager at BSR), who will discuss Conflict-Sensitive Human Rights Due Diligence for Tech Companies and present recommendations from their newly launched Toolkit on this issue. The last decade has seen increases in state fragility and the number of violent conflicts around the world. Companies operating in these contexts face heightened risks of being involved with those human rights harms, and the tech industry has a particularly complex nexus to conflict and instability. While the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) call on companies to conduct heightened—or more in-depth—due diligence in conflict settings due to the proportionately higher risk of adverse human rights impacts, for tech companies, this poses unique challenges and requires a rethinking of how technology can impact conflict and pose heightened risks of human rights harms. The Toolkit provides analytical and operational decision-making guidance for tech companies, detailing key systems and processes they need to have to detect and address human rights risks during conflict and what enhanced or heightened due diligence should entail.