[CCWG-ACCT] yet another human rights question

[Nigel Roberts]

I agree with Avri.

There are a number of fundamental rights that are impacted by ICANN's work.

I refer to the European Convention, but obviously, if you are outside of 
Europe there are almost direct equivalents in the US Constitution, the 
Canadian Charter, and of course, the Universal Declaration.

Ther are the "obvious" rights. such Art.1 of Prot. 1, Art 6(1), Art 8, 
Art 10.

There are also the less obviously applicable -- it should be entirely 
uncontroversial that ICANN should always act in a way that protects the 
unqualified rights, such as the right to life and freedom from slavery 
and torture.

ICANN HAS in its bylaws already given a binding committment to uphold 
international customary norms, but what is lacking is a mechanism to 
ensure it does -- without which they are empty words, except when somone 
spends half a million dollars in court, or IRP to make them.






On 27/07/15 08:44, Avri Doria wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am currently writing up my minority report and came to a question I
> could not answer.
>
> Point 4 of the NTIA requirements includes:
>
>    * Maintain the openness of the Internet.
>
> This is a Human rights requirement that I do not see reflected in our
> stress tests.  Can someone point me at the stress test?  Openness of the
> Internet is a derivative or 'umbrella' right that is defined by
> reference to human rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of
> association, privacy, property, security &c and their interplay.
>
> This is one of the stress factors:
>
>    * the US and thus NTIA, is a human rights duty bearer.
>    * if we were to violate human rights, NTIA in its oversight role would
>      have to stop us from doing so and I am sure they would have done so.
>        o e.g. if we were to start making rules that discriminated and
>          were to injure human rights such as expressions or association
>          in our policies, policies that infringed on the requirement of
>          openness of the Internet, they would have to do something about it.
>    * Without the NTIA as oversight, what is to stop us from infringing on
>      the human right of an Open Internet?
>
> We do not have, as far as I can tell, a stress test that covers this.
>
> We need, as part of WS1, a bylaw that covers this deficiency.  Despite
> the fact that there has been a 'vote' to exclude any mention of human
> rights and human rights impact analyses from the bylaws, I persist in
> the belief that we need a bylaw to cover this and meet the NTIA
> requirements.
>
> I understand that for some I went too far in suggesting a remedy for how
> we might do that, within the bylaw I orinigally suggested and want to
> try another suggestion before I go back to writing my minority report.
>
> /In order to enure that openness of the Internet within ICANN's mission
> may be maintained,  human rights impact assessments will be done/ /on
> ICANN policies [as appropriate]/.
>
>
> Note this is not per--se requiring us to live up to human rights, but is
> requiring that we understand the impact of our actions.  It can also
> includes the weasel words 'as appropriate' at the end if required.
>
> Figuring how we do this then becomes the WS2 issue.
>
> Thanks and apologies for bringing it up again, but on realizing that we
> do not stress test against the requirements for maintaining the human
> right of openness of the Internet made me realize that the deficiency
> was larger than just one of ignoring comments on our draft.
>
> avri
>
>
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