BSR Insight | Ten Lessons From a Year’s Hard Work in ICT and Human Rights
About the Author(s)
Dunstan Allison Hope, Managing Director, Advisory Services
Publication Date
September 11, 2012
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One year ago, we published a report on applying the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights to the information, communications, and technology (ICT) industry.
Today, we're publishing an updated version with 10 lessons based on the work we've done to put our thinking into practice. Here are five of those lessons:
- Human rights impact assessments (HRIAs) at the level of the product, service, or technology (rather than more traditional HRIAs at the corporate or country level) can be especially important for ICT companies.
- The speed of innovation in the ICT industry presents a daunting challenge for HRIAs, with products often changing during the course of a single assessment.
- Applying a "tree structure"—a single policy that branches out to other issue-specific policies—works well for human rights policies in the ICT industry.
- Outside headquarters, such as at the country or business unit level, the standard of human rights expertise in a company can be very low. Clear guidance is required.
- ICT companies have a significant opportunity to enhance their human rights reporting—for example, by covering how they manage relationships with law-enforcement agencies.
About the Author(s)
Dunstan Allison Hope, Managing Director, Advisory Services
Dunstan works with a diverse range of companies—including those in the information and communications technology (ICT), consumer products, and heavy manufacturing sectors—on corporate responsibility issues such as human rights, reporting, sustainability strategy, and stakeholder engagement... Read more →
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