Minutes for IMTG at IETF-96
minutes-96-imtg-1

[meeting notes taken by Pete Resnick and Lucas Jenß]

IMTG Tuesday, July 19 - 11:30-12:30 Potsdam III

Educational session for experts to share knowledge about human rights,
business, and strategies for navigating human rights issues within the IETF.

Started at 11:30- Alissa Cooper chairing

Chairs slides: https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/96/slides/slides-96-imtg-3.pdf

Agenda:

5m    Introduction - Alissa Cooper

- IESG wanted to book time to explore some of the issues raised regarding IETF
100. Evolved into an educational session with experts providing info regarding
human rights, business, and strategies to deal with this regarding IETF ops.

- Non-goals: No specific recommendations. Also not going to challenge or
interfere with HRPC.

- IETF is unique (not a business, not a non-profit, not an NGO, not really like
most SDOs). But listening to others experience might still be helpful.

**Agenda bash - no objections

20m   Human rights: basics, business, and frameworks - Allon Bar

Slides: https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/96/slides/slides-96-imtg-5.pdf

Allon Bar (ab) from Ranking Digital Rights presents

ab (asks the room): What are human rights?
Chaals Nevile (cn): Being treated the same, i.e. not being discriminated against

ab gives an overview of what human rights are, explains that they are not
universally respected.

ab asks room how business/organizations can affect human rights
cn: making access to business services available on a discriminatory basis,
bulldozing their houses ab: also e.g. when business use child labor,[...], or
use security to crack down on protests

ab presents UN Guiding Principes on Business & Human Rights

ab's organization looks to standards companies set for HR and reviews
conformance to those standards, develops a "Corporate Accountability Index". ab
discusses how companies have impact on HR, deal with grievance and remedy, etc.

(no questions from the room)

20m   Applications of human rights principles - Motoko Aizawa

Motoko Aizawa (ma) from Institue for Human Rights and Business presents

Slides: https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/96/slides/slides-96-imtg-4.pdf

ma: Many arenas (businesses, non profits, etc.) dealing with human rights
challenges/dilemmas Presents due-diligence steps to address challenges in HR
Reviews cyber security products as an example of a technology that can impact
HR Overview of engagement with ICANN (including HR statement in ICANN by-laws)
Overview of guidance regarding LGBTI issues Presents how other organizations
make their selections of meeting veneues based on human rights considerations

15m   Q&A

Alissa Cooper (ac) opens Q&A

Randall Gellens: how would one go about deciding that (what?)
ma: consulting local stakeholders and ngos who are active is a quick way to
address that question ac: what do you mean by NGO? ma: Both NGOs like yours and
NGOs that deal with the particular issue.

Ted Hardie: one thing thats interesting about the ietf is that it has no
members. participants have different level of participations. one question on
choosing venues is "does it enable partcipations or not", but since there is no
membership its hard to determine how participants are impacted - I've talked
about the economic cost of participation in different venues. given that there
is no membership, how would we conduct such an assessment? ma: way to poll
people who frequently come to meetings. would promote a very consultative
approach to this

Lousewies van der Laan (ICANN Board)?: first thing, we chose the advocacy
approach. when in armenia, contacted local lgbti organizations and asked if we
should do something with them [...]. had a meeting in budapest because we were
concerned about the human rights decision there, so we chose it precisely
because of the problematic situation there [...]. if IETF decides to go to
singapur, have a tshirt w/ a rainbow on it, there are very small things that
you could do to have an impact

cn: Experience with question of how far to push the advocacy. Are you
supporting human rights or are you becoming a propaganda tool for those who are
violating? Hard question. But what do you do when there are rights in conflict?
E.g., gender/sexual identity vs. religious freedom. ab: difficult question, how
do you balance different conflicting rights. no cookie cutter answer to that.
human rights have been formulated so that they are indivisible. in practice
it'll always be a difficult act implementing them, e.g. privacy vs. security.
ma (elaborates further): there are rules within human rights that say there are
certain rights that can be restricted by government/law in particular
circumstances, but others are absolute. its a balancing act and its a judgement
call, but it should be socialized in the organization so that everyone can
explain their position (why/how)

Jari Arrko: You mentioned the different modes: Compromise, "Embassy", Advococy.
How extensive is "Embassy"? Can you give examples of how this might work? ma:
e.g. providing benefits to LGBTI couples that are not legally required,
convening a space within an office for lgbti to discuss issues, those are
things to do in context of the embassy model that organizations can do

Dave Crocker: Need to distinguish between how IETF conducts its business vs.
advocacy actions we might take. The model is simple: Just show up and
participate. The challenge is choosing the "where to show up". I think we
should choose not to be advocates, but stick to our principle of being as
inclusive in our work as we can. We sometimes show up in offenseive places. We
have no means to figure out where to show up other than spontaneous decisions.
We could use some guidance.

Chaals Nevile: wanted to address last questions of how to create safe spaces. I
work in a company based in russia, and russia has a bunch of laws against
promoting homosexuality and "non-traditional families". company has policy to
not discrimnate against ppl based on sexuality and reminds employees from time
to time. Obeying local law is generally important…

So its one thing going to a country where it is legal to discrimnate against
ppl based on "color of eyes", its another thing to go to a country where its
illegal NOT to discriminate against such ppl.

Niels Ten Oever: there are a lot of human rights treaties. what would be a good
method to understand which rights are relevant for this organizations, and what
methods can you suggest for us so that we know that we're not cherry-picking
particular participants' rights. problem is that we cannot question
participants that we want here but who are not here yet [...]. The fact that we
do voluntary standards means that noone is required to implement. Does that
change the decision process? (ac: super brief responses and then we'll call it
a day) ma: most of what you say are statements. I dont think that your meeting
venue decision process is chaotic, so clarify those criteria and [...]. there
is no simple answer. you are not an lgbti advocacy organization, [...], you
could say thats something thats nice to have but not central to our
organization, but you still need to address your participants concerns about
how you are going to deal with [such issues]. this has a lot to do with
socializing the discussion inside your organization. how to know you're not
cherry-picking: you could have a thorough analysis of [...]. we could pick out
this particular right because everyone agrees that its important, thats another
way of figuring out your human right strategy ab: There are different
organizations that can give an evaluation of human rights issues and you can
get input from there. Polling/surveying participants can help discover what
would hinder participation.

Alissa gives thanks to the presenters and closes the meeting (12:37).