[cc-humanrights] Last call for CCWP charter

[Niels ten Oever]

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Dear all,

With pleasure I can announce that the charter has been adopted.

I am looking forward to continue our work on the research!

Rafik has already booked a room for Buenos Aires, I will soon come
back with more comments on the research as outlines by Monika, all
your comments on that are still very welcome.

Best,

Niels

Niels ten Oever
Head of Digital

Article 19
www.article19.org

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On 04/10/2015 11:43 AM, Niels ten Oever wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I have tried to balance both the comments and text suggestions
> from everyone in the following draft text for the CCWP. I tried to
> balance ICANNs corporate responsibilities, social responsibilities,
> its impact on society and its impact on human rights.
> 
> I hope this text is both broad and narrow enough for everyone to
> work with. I'm greatly looking forward to your endorsements,
> comments (preferably with text suggestions), I hope we can make the
> final decision on Tuesday.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Niels
> 
> PS I'm also keeping a pad with the changes here: 
> https://etherpad.mozilla.org/icannhr
> 
> Background
> 
> This cross community working party (CCWP) seeks to map and
> understand the issues and potential solutions related to corporate
> and social responsibilities of the Internet Corporation for
> Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and this related, but not 
> limited to policies, procedures and operations, it particularly 
> focuses on ICANNs responsibility to respect human rights. It builds
> on a long term community engagement on this topic, further
> catalyzed with the publication of the paper 'ICANN's procedures and
> policies in the light of human rights, fundamental freedoms and
> democratic values', as commissioned by the Council of Europe, and
> after sessions held in London, Los Angeles and Singapore. It seeks
> to improve ICANN's measures to respect human rights in accordance
> with article 4 of ICANN's articles of incorporation and and have
> established a programme for corporate social responsibility.
> 
> Objective
> 
> The CCWP on ICANNs Corporate  and Social Responsibility to Respect 
> Human Rights  would have the purpose to raise awareness, provide 
> information, facilitate dialogue and make suggestions to ICANN the 
> corporation and the ICANN community on ways to better harmonize 
> ICANN’s policies and procedures with internationally recognized
> human rights and corporate social responsibility standards, such as
> UN Guiding Principles on Business and HUman Rights, the UN Global 
> Compact, and the European Commission and International Human
> Rights and Business guidelines on implementation of the UN Guiding
> Principles on Business and Human Rights for the ICT Sector. This
> specifically in the context of the Universal Declaration of Human
> Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political
> Rights (ICCPR). The working party will focus on issues related to
> human rights that are directly impacted by ICANN policy decisions,
> procedures and operations.
> 
> Responsibilities and scope of work
> 
> (i) To continue the process of raising awareness about the
> interplay between ICANN’s policies, procedures and operations and
> corporate and social responsibility issues, specifically with
> respect for human rights;
> 
> (ii) To map and collect information from the community about cases
> as well as current ICANN policies, procedures and operations that
> present an impact on the respect of human rights in which further
> guidance on how to harmonize policies and procedures with increased
> respect of human rights would be necessary;
> 
> (iii) To develop corporate and social responsibility guidelines
> for the procedures that are in place or that should be created in
> the policy development process to ensure specifically, but not
> limited to, the respect for human rights;
> 
> (iv) To provide information, suggestions and recommendations to
> the chartering organizations and to the broader ICANN community on
> how ICANN’s policies and procedures can be developed and
> implemented consistent with internationally recognized standards.
> This input can inform the policy development processes as defined
> in the ICANN Bylaws.
> 
> (v) To propose procedures and mechanisms with the aim of producing 
> assessments on if and how policies and procedures under
> development and/or being implemented may impact on human rights.
> 
> (vi) Draft Position Papers and Statements as deemed appropriate
> 
> (vii) To carry out further discussions about the pertinence and
> timing for the creation of a cross-community working group on this
> issue.
> 
> The membership of the CCWP on ICANNs Corporate  and Social 
> Responsibility to Respect Human Rights is proposed to include
> members representing the diversity of the ICANN community. The
> Working Party will serve as a focal point for the CSR discussion,
> knowledge dissemination and communication about the impact of
> ICANN's policies and procedures on corporate and social
> responsibility, specifically related to Human Rights. Its
> activities will be conducted in an open and fully transparent
> manner.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Niels ten Oever Head of Digital
> 
> Article 19 www.article19.org
> 
> PGP fingerprint    8D9F C567 BEE4 A431 56C4 678B 08B5 A0F2 636D
> 68E9
> 
> On 04/06/2015 06:27 PM, Niels ten Oever wrote:
>> 
>> On 04/06/2015 06:12 PM, Patrik Fältström wrote:
>>>> By adding Corporate Social Responsibility to the work of this
>>>>  working party we're expanding the scope far beyond human 
>>>> rights. Initially we have tried to make the scope smaller by 
>>>> only having a look at first generation human rights, and 
>>>> predominantly freedom of expression and the right to privacy 
>>>> and the impact ICANN has on them. CSR opens up the
>>>> discussion on: The impact of a company on economic,
>>>> environmental and social impacts caused by its everyday
>>>> activities. These are a lot of different things, far beyond
>>>> what was initially envisioned. Ranging from CO2 emisions,
>>>> travel policy, transparency, renumeration, supply chain
>>>> disclosure, I've been having a look at the best practices in
>>>> CSR-land, and it is quite huge:
>>>> https://www.globalreporting.org/
>>> 
>>> Yes, CSR is a VERY broad topic. One must scope it.
>>> 
>>>> If we manage to produce a report provuides an analysis and 
>>>> recommendations based on the IHRB report [0] that Patrik 
>>>> mentioned is, would for me be a perfect outcome of our work, 
>>>> but I am curious if people think we should go further.
>>>> 
>>>> Patrik mentioned that he wanted to include topics of labor in
>>>>  this work, but that seems covered by the UN Guiding
>>>> Principles on Business and Human Rights and are also
>>>> addressed in the IHRB report.
>>> 
>>> No, I said we COULD do that.
>>> 
>>> I agree we must be scoped.
>>> 
>>>> So I just want to make sure that our scope is wide enough to
>>>>  include everything we want to do, but narrow enough to keep
>>>> it manageable.
>>>> 
>>>> Currently I am not 100% sure if we are discussing semantics, 
>>>> or issues we want to tackle, it seems we are discussing the 
>>>> difference between things that mean the same to me:
>>> 
>>> To me semantics.
>> 
>> Happy to hear this all. Let's work it out :)
>>> 
>>>> 1. CCWP on ICANN and Human Rights 2. CCWP on ICANNs Corporate
>>>>  Responsibility to Respect Human Rights 3. CCWP on ICANN CSR
>>>>  issues related to Human Rights
>>>> 
>>>> But I think that this has a far wider scope:
>>>> 
>>>> 4. CCWP on Corporate Social Responsibility for ICANN
>>>> 
>>>> And this email made me want to check with you Patrik if we're
>>>>  talking about the same thing:
>>>> 
>>>> On 04/05/2015 04:42 PM, Patrik Fältström wrote:
>>>>> I just do not want this to be a CCWG on Human Rights. It 
>>>>> should be on ICANN CSR issues related to Human Rights.
>>>>> 
>>>>> And once again, if I am alone in being sensitive on this 
>>>>> kind of wording, let me know. Then I rest my case ;-)
>>>> 
>>>> Looking forward to discuss!
>>> 
>>> So it is [3] above I am asking for, of your four alternatives.
>>> 
>>> But I understand the view of Bill that it might be viewed 
>>> immediately as "ICANN as the corporation", so I can go with a 
>>> name of the CCWG that is as [1].
>>> 
>>> I will have a look at the document you produced online Niels.
>>> 
>>> Once again, I am sensitive to "Human Rights" as I very
>>> strongly see Human Rights are agreements between states on what
>>> they MUST do and what they MUST NEVER do. Everyone else is
>>> acting in that context. For example by doing activities that
>>> forces States to change their behavior. Or by acting in a
>>> specific way just because States do misbehave (but one have to
>>> do things there anyway).
>>> 
>>> It might have been teachers I have had that hammered this 
>>> possibly too drastic view into my brain...but there you are.
>>> 
>>> And still, I can view myself be in the minority here.
>>> 
>>> Patrik
>>> 
>> 
>> Very happy to have your voice in this discussion Patrik (isn't 
>> human rights all about protecting minorities ;) ). Previously we 
>> noticed that as long as we were talking about Human Rights,
>> people thought we were going to have ICANN as an advocacy
>> organizations against torture. Adding 'ICANNs Corporate
>> Responsibility to Respect Human Rights' made things much clearer
>> for many people (and linked it very directly to the UN Guiding
>> Principles on Business and Human Rights). So great to be able to
>> test what is the best language to describe what we want to do.
>> 
>> There are indeed different obligations for states (that should 
>> protect human rights) and for other actors (that should respect 
>> human rights), which is both a responsibility.
>> 
>> It's just that CSR has become quite something of a marketing
>> term for a lot of different things, so I would be afraid that it
>> would create more confusion than it would solve. But if you think
>> the opposite, what would you think of:
>> 
>> 5. CCWP on ICANNs Corporate Social Responsibility to respect
>> Human Rights ?
>> 
>> I think it would help deciding on this before I go edit the 
>> document.
>> 
>> Finally, Bill: do you think the issue about 'corporate' is more
>> of an issue in CSR than in CR ? Because this was not brought up
>> at the discussion in Singapore even though the title of the
>> session was ICANNs Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human
>> Rights.
>> 
>> Looking forward to discuss.
>> 
>> Best,
>> 
>> Niels
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________ cc-humanrights 
>> mailing list cc-humanrights at icann.org 
>> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-humanrights
>> 
> 
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