Session
Organizer 1: Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
Organizer 2: Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Organizer 3: Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Organizer 4: Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Organizer 5: Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Organizer 6: Intergovernmental Organization, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Organizer 7: Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
Organizer 2: Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Organizer 3: Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Organizer 4: Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Organizer 5: Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Organizer 6: Intergovernmental Organization, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Organizer 7: Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
Speaker 1: Pitler Ben, Intergovernmental Organization, Intergovernmental Organization
Speaker 2: Eriksen Caroline, Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 3: Anna Warberg, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 2: Eriksen Caroline, Government, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 3: Anna Warberg, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Format
Roundtable
Duration (minutes): 60
Format description: The organizers of this session support the IGF's commitment to collaborative workshop sessions rather than standard panel discussions. We also share IGF's commitment to ensuring that these workshops benefit from a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. With this in mind, we believe a 60-minute workshop in a round table setting is best suited for our session. The topic of this workshop – encouraging human rights due diligence by technology investors – is inherently multistakeholder in nature. It requires inputs from investors, companies, civil society, governments, and others. The goal of the workshop is to collaborate to produce a concrete list of action points that different stakeholder groups can take forward and implement. With this in mind, it is imperative that this diverse group of participants be able to look each other in the eye and communicate. We believe that 60 minutes is a sufficient time for this discussion.
Duration (minutes): 60
Format description: The organizers of this session support the IGF's commitment to collaborative workshop sessions rather than standard panel discussions. We also share IGF's commitment to ensuring that these workshops benefit from a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. With this in mind, we believe a 60-minute workshop in a round table setting is best suited for our session. The topic of this workshop – encouraging human rights due diligence by technology investors – is inherently multistakeholder in nature. It requires inputs from investors, companies, civil society, governments, and others. The goal of the workshop is to collaborate to produce a concrete list of action points that different stakeholder groups can take forward and implement. With this in mind, it is imperative that this diverse group of participants be able to look each other in the eye and communicate. We believe that 60 minutes is a sufficient time for this discussion.
Policy Question(s)
- How can investors embrace their responsibility to integrate human rights and HRDD into decision-making, including by using their leverage to encourage portfolio companies to conduct HRDD?
- What can all stakeholders do to create conditions conducive to investor HRDD? How can we ensure that investor confidence in long term returns includes HRDD?
- How can we ensure that stakeholders with expert-level knowledge of tech-related human rights risks (CSOs, UN, etc.) can access and communicate with investing decision-makers?
- What is the role of investors currently engaged in HRDD in signalling the importance of HRDD to their investor peers?
What will participants gain from attending this session? Participants in this session will gain an improved understanding of:
- Specific human rights risks associated with technology company business models that may be identified, assessed, and addressed through investor HRDD
- Exactly how HRDD by investors serves to encourage HRDD by technology companies
- How disparate types of stakeholders can collaborate toward enhanced uptake of HRDD across the investing sector
- The challenges currently preventing the implementation of widespread HRDD among investors
- The landscape of current collaborative multistakeholder initiatives to support investor HRDD
- Specific action points that each stakeholder group can implement going forward in order to contribute to an overall policy environment more conducive to investor HRDD in the technology sector
Description:
This workshop is co-organized by the UN B-Tech Project (B-Tech), Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), and the Council on Ethics for the Swedish National Pension Funds (CoE). Investors in the technology sector have a responsibility to conduct human rights due diligence (HRDD), as described by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). From an investor perspective, conducting HRDD includes encouraging portfolio companies to conduct their own HRDD to address human rights risks linked to their business practices, products and services. Investor HRDD helps to ensure that technologies with key internet governance impacts--including surveillance products and AI--are developed sustainably, responsibly, and in a rights-respecting way. Increasing the uptake of HRDD across the investing ecosystem is thus crucial for corporate respect for human rights. Investors, companies, governments, regulators, civil society, and others have roles to play in promoting HRDD by technology investors. This workshop will convene these stakeholders to discuss strategies and best practices toward this goal. Organizers will convene a diverse group, with a focus on gender and regional background. The session will begin with framing remarks from organizers. B-Tech will address the foundations of HRDD in the UNGPs and connections between human rights risks and business risks. As representatives of global institutional investors, NBIM and CoE will address their own HRDD practices, experiences engaging with companies and CSOs on human rights, as well as views on materiality. Then, participants will hold a guided group discussion. Based on a pre-distributed list of questions, the discussion aims to produce a concrete list of action points to serve as a framework for next steps to achieve more widespread investor HRDD. Following the IGF, organizers will include this list of action points in the session report. Some key questions for discussion are listed below under "policy questions."
This workshop is co-organized by the UN B-Tech Project (B-Tech), Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), and the Council on Ethics for the Swedish National Pension Funds (CoE). Investors in the technology sector have a responsibility to conduct human rights due diligence (HRDD), as described by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). From an investor perspective, conducting HRDD includes encouraging portfolio companies to conduct their own HRDD to address human rights risks linked to their business practices, products and services. Investor HRDD helps to ensure that technologies with key internet governance impacts--including surveillance products and AI--are developed sustainably, responsibly, and in a rights-respecting way. Increasing the uptake of HRDD across the investing ecosystem is thus crucial for corporate respect for human rights. Investors, companies, governments, regulators, civil society, and others have roles to play in promoting HRDD by technology investors. This workshop will convene these stakeholders to discuss strategies and best practices toward this goal. Organizers will convene a diverse group, with a focus on gender and regional background. The session will begin with framing remarks from organizers. B-Tech will address the foundations of HRDD in the UNGPs and connections between human rights risks and business risks. As representatives of global institutional investors, NBIM and CoE will address their own HRDD practices, experiences engaging with companies and CSOs on human rights, as well as views on materiality. Then, participants will hold a guided group discussion. Based on a pre-distributed list of questions, the discussion aims to produce a concrete list of action points to serve as a framework for next steps to achieve more widespread investor HRDD. Following the IGF, organizers will include this list of action points in the session report. Some key questions for discussion are listed below under "policy questions."
Expected Outcomes
Connecting this varied group of stakeholders, drawn from the diverse pool of IGF attendees, is itself an important outcome. Achieving the conditions necessary for enhanced uptake of HRDD across the investing sector – a conducive policy environment, stronger awareness among investors, company readiness to respond to investor engagements – requires efforts from a variety of actors who are not always well-connected and do not communicate frequently. Bringing this group together is an important step toward engendering necessary multistakeholder collaboration.
This session will also produce a key concrete output: a list of proposed action points to serve as a framework for future work among the represented stakeholders toward achieving more widespread investor HRDD. We expect that this output, as well as lessons learned from the discussion itself, will significantly influence the work of both the organizers and attendees to promote investor HRDD.
Hybrid Format: Organizers are committed to a productive experience for online and onsite participants, including seamless communication between both groups. First, organizers will deliver scene-setting remarks, speaking to those in the room but directly addressing webcams so those online can hear the remarks and see speakers' faces.
The bulk of the session will be a moderated discussion. This can be approached two ways: either one group discussion, with online participants listening and contributing directly (there will be an online moderator monitoring questions/hands from online participants) or online participants can hold a parallel discussion with the online moderator, and then the online and in-person moderators will report to the full group about the content of each discussion. We are open to either, subject to IGF's preference.
To ensure interaction, we will utilize a shared googleDoc, accessible to all participants, where moderators will note and summarize all contributions to the discussions.