| APrIGF 2022 Session Proposal Submission Form | |||||||||||
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| Part 1 - Lead Organizer | |||||||||||
| Contact Person | |||||||||||
| Ms. Gayatri Khandhadai | |||||||||||
| Organization / Affiliation (Please state "Individual" if appropriate) * | |||||||||||
| Business and Human Rights Resource Centre | |||||||||||
| Designation | |||||||||||
| Head of Technology and Human Rights | |||||||||||
| Gender | |||||||||||
| Female | |||||||||||
| Economy of Residence | |||||||||||
| Mauritius | |||||||||||
| Primary Stakeholder Group | |||||||||||
| Civil Society | |||||||||||
| List Your Organizing Partners (if any) | |||||||||||
| Access Now | |||||||||||
| Part 2 - Session Proposal | |||||||||||
| Session Title | |||||||||||
| Assessing investments in surveillance and technology | |||||||||||
| Session Format | |||||||||||
| Showcase | |||||||||||
| Where do you plan to organize your session? | |||||||||||
| Onsite at the venue (with online moderator for questions and comments from remote participants) | |||||||||||
| Specific Issues for Discussion | |||||||||||
| Surveillance technologies are fundamentally reshaping our societies. Certain technologies within the surveillance sector can serve legitimate law-enforcement and national security purposes with appropriate government oversight and accountability. However, many surveillance products and services are being used to systematically violate human rights by reinforcing discrimination, promoting censorship of the media, violating individuals’ right to privacy, facilitating detention and forced labour, and enabling attacks against human rights defenders. Companies do not function in a vacuum. Investors, both private and public, are critical to enabling the set up and continued existence of companies. Therefore, investors have a responsibility to ensure their portfolio companies are respecting human rights and are not unnecessarily exposed to legal, reputational, and financial risks. Navigating the surveillance technology ecosystem: A human rights due diligence guide for investors (https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/from-us/briefings/navigating-the-surveillance-technology-ecosystem-, a guide developed by the organisers and partners, provides shareholders with a deeper understanding of the potential human rights issues going unnoticed in their portfolio companies’ value chains and equips them with a framework to make rights-respecting decisions. The proposed session provides for a space to hear from the developers of the guide and a representative from the investors community about the metrics in the guide and how investors view human rights compliance. The discussions will shed light on how these dual use technologies create human rights and other material risks for investors’ portfolios, often in unexpected ways. Finally, the guide’s authors will answer questions and discuss how the guide can help investors, technical community and civil society advance corporate accountability throughout the surveillance technology ecosystem, including through company engagem) |
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| Describe the Relevance of Your Session to APrIGF | |||||||||||
| Surveillance and private sector accountability hit at the heart of trust and sustainability of the internet. Accountability is an integral part of internet governance. For credible and reliable internet governance, several stakeholders, especially those who are not as visible need to be addressed and integrated. This session brings to the platform a unique and often under represented stakeholder - investors in technology based companies. Given the desire of APrIGF to ensure that all stakeholders, especially the government and private sector become more engages, this session presents an opportunity unlike others. By discussing human rights assessment of investments, civil society and the technical community engaged in digital rights will also be presented with an opportunity to experience a discussion and resource on an under explored avenue of advocacy. Further, the session will build the capacity of participants to adapt the assessment guide to their context, ultimately strengthening the APrIG community. APrIGF’s theme of “People at the Centre: Envisioning a community-led Internet that is inclusive, sustainable and trusted” requires greater engagement of people in the processes and institutions that impact the internet. The session proposed addresses inclusivity, trust and sustainability of the internet. The session is built around the guide that helps participants understand effective due diligence will help shareholders with investments in the surveillance technology ecosystem identify, assess, prevent and mitigate increasing human rights and other material risks; as well as helping civil society and other stakeholders use this as leverage in advocating for more accountable technologies. Ultimately, this contributes to inclusivity of people’s perspectives and stakeholders in the governance processes and addressing core digital rights issues such as freedom of expression and privacy. The session and the guide aim at greater understanding of human rights im |
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| Methodology / Agenda (Please add rows by clicking "+" on the right) | |||||||||||
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| Moderators & Speakers Info (Please complete where possible) | |||||||||||
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| Please explain the rationale for choosing each of the above contributors to the session. | |||||||||||
| Gayatri Khandhadai and Danny Rayan have coordinated the writing and edits of the publication Navigating the surveillance technology ecosystem: A human rights due diligence guide for investors, a guide developed by the organisers. They are best placed to moderate this discussion. Dhevy Sivaprakasam is from Access Now which is a co-contributor to the guide and have extensive experience in advocating for human rights in digital spaced and have been engaging in investor based advocacy for rights respecting technologies. They are therefore best positioned to discuss the key issues discussed in the guide. Loraine Hau is an Associate, ESG Analyst, Responsible Investment with Colombia Threadneedle. She is well acquainted with the guide and has already participated in discussions like the one proposed on the guide. She would therefore be able to bring a unique perspective to APrIGF. |
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| If you need assistance to find a suitable speaker to contribute to your session, or an onsite facilitator for your online-only session, please specify your request with details of what you are looking for. | |||||||||||
| No | |||||||||||
| Please declare if you have any potential conflict of interest with the Program Committee 2022. | |||||||||||
| No | |||||||||||
| Are you or other session contributors planning to apply for the APrIGF Fellowship Program 2022? | |||||||||||
| No | |||||||||||
| Number of Attendees (Please fill in numbers) | |||||||||||
| Gender Balance in Moderators/Speakers (Please fill in numbers) | |||||||||||
| Admin Use | |||||||||||
| S24 | |||||||||||
| Consent | |||||||||||
 I agree that my data can be submitted to forms.for.asia and processed by APrIGF organizers for the program selection of APrIGF 2022. |
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