Session
Business and Human Rights Resource Centre
Business and Human Rights Resource Centre
Gayatri Khandhadai – Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (Organizer, Onsite Moderator) Marwa Fatafta – Access Now (Speaker and Co-organiser, MENA Region) Dr. Pichamon Yeophantong – Deakin University / UN Working Group on Business & Human Rights (Speaker, Asia-Pacific) Kiran Aziz – KLP, Norway (Speaker, Europe) Phillipe Stoll – International Committee of the Red Cross (Speaker, Europe) Meredith Veit, Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (Organizer, Online Moderator) Jalal Abukhater, 7amleh (Co-organiser and Rapporteur, Middle-east)
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Targets: 9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Roundtable
A workshop is best suited for this discussion as it needs in-depth conversation on solutions and this is an urgent issue. Why are we failing despite international attention on conflicts? To answer this question, we need a multistakeholder solution oriented dialogue, one that accounts for all perspectives. The aim is to have an interactive discussion garnering insights from all the participants. A round table format will let us have the following session plan:1. 30 minutes of introductory interventions by the different speakers 2. 30 minutes of discussion on gaps in the current initiatives to hold companies accountable for violations in conflict zones 3. 30 minutes of discussion on what concrete recommendations we can make to companies, states and to international mechanisms. We need this to be a collaborative exercise and a round table will facilitate that.
The growing role of tech companies in conflict is increasingly under scrutiny, as digital platforms, surveillance technologies, and AI-driven tools become both enablers of violence and instruments of accountability. Profiteering from war economies remains an under discussed area in multi stakeholder spaces. To fill this gap, this session will explore: 1. How tech companies contribute to conflict dynamics through providing infrastructure, platform governance and AI-driven surveillance. 2. Challenges that business relationships of tech companies with governments or other actors accused of war crimes poses. 3. Actualizing corporate responsibility of tech companies operating in conflict zones, including compliance with heightened human rights due diligence. 4. The challenges of responsible disengagement and the risks of complicity when withdrawing from conflict zones. 5. What accountability mechanisms exist (or should be developed) to ensure corporate compliance with international humanitarian law and requirements of heightened due diligence. The session will feature insights from experts in human rights, responsible investing, humanitarian law and corporate accountability. We will be drawing on perspectives from MENA, Asia-Pacific, Africa and Europe based on the data collected by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre on conflict and corporate accountability. This is a diverse and multi-stakeholder dialogue geared towards finding the right solutions. Given that the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights focused on conflict later this year and the inclusion of a BPF on Securing Access to the Internet and Protect Core Internet Resources in Contexts of Conflict and Crises, this discussion is not only timely but necessary at the IGF.
To provide a more inclusive experience for participants on-site and online, the event is going to livestreamed, and an online moderator will collect questions from the audience to be answered duringt he relevant sections of the session. The onsite moderator will be in close contact with the online moderator to field questions or feedback. The online moderator will host the interactive discussion with the participants on the link and to gather their feedback to the questions that the onsite participants will be discussing. The participants will use a whiteboard or similar tool that is most accessible by all which will be shared on the onsite moderators’ s screen to facilitate organizing ideas that are shared by the participants.