Exploring the role of HRIA in the information and communication technologies (ICT) sector

The diverse nature of the information and communication technologies (ICT) sector and the distributed architecture of the internet results in the various ways in which the business activities of the sector intersect with human rights. This chapter explores the role of human rights impact assessment (HRIA) in the ICT sector, presents a concrete case study, and discusses some of the lessons learned from practice. The chapter provides an overview of how human rights are relevant to the sector, including examples of adverse human rights impacts and of different types of human rights analyses performed in the sector. It then considers a concrete HRIA case study, targeting a top-level country code domain name registry in the Netherlands. The final part of the chapter draws on the case study to highlight and discuss some of the key issues and challenges for conducting HRIA in relation to domain name providers.