Supporting the ICT sector in respecting human rights

Given the critical role Internet infrastructure providers—including domain name registries and registrars, service providers, content delivery networks, and other technical actors, that make the Internet work—play in our economy and society, it’s a solemn responsibility of such actors to respect human rights.

To identify the activities that may cause, contribute to, or be directly linked to adverse impacts in this sector and develop a tool and a methodology that can help Internet infrastructure providers gauge their level of achievement on respecting human rights, the Danish Institute for Human Rights and the NGO ARTICLE 19 joined forces in 2017.

Since then we have collaborated on developing a tool and methodology for Internet infrastructure providers to assess their human rights impacts. As part of this wider project we recently completed the very first human rights assessment together with a generic top-level domain (gTLD) registry, Public Interest Registry (PIR), the company that operates .ORG, .NGO, and several internationalized top-level domains.

Such a process has only been conducted by two other Internet registries and registrars before: the Dutch Internet domain registry SIDN and Blacknight Internet Solutions LTD.

Apart from considering potential impacts related to PIR’s provision of services, our methodology takes the full range of human rights impacts into account. Therefore, it also included looking at PIR as an employer and procurer of goods and services, as well as its role in relation to the environment and local communities.

As with prior assessments conducted, our observations and recommendations were submitted in a report to PIR. Through our collaboration and based on our recommendations, the company has committed to continue their efforts to further prevent and mitigate any adverse human rights impacts related to their activities and relationships.