This week I’ll be attending the RIPE meeting in Iceland. The week’s schedule should be quite interesting, with both plenary sessions on various topics, as well as some more specific sessions organised by the various working groups.
Topics that will be covered are, naturally, of a very technical nature for the most part, but there are also several sessions that will be more accessible for the less technical (like me!).
I’ll be speaking Wednesday on our experiences with conducting a human rights impact assessment of our business and where we’re at with it all now.
When people hear the term “human rights” it often makes them think about oppression, repressive regimes, torture and other things that impact people in various parts of the world. You don’t, however, automatically think about what it can mean for your business.
Bottom line human rights is really about taking into consideration how your business works and its impact on both employees, suppliers and clients.
Last year we worked with Article 19 and the Danish Institute for Human Rights on conducting a Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) of our business. It was a fascinating and very worthwhile experience and I’d happily encourage any other company in the tech space to consider doing one.
I spoke about our experiences with the HRIA at IGF in Paris last year and will be doing so again this week at the RIPE meeting.
But what about the other stuff going on at RIPE 78?
RIPE meetings bring together network operators from across Europe and further afield. The meeting always has a fairly mixed schedule of both purely technical topics, as well as others that are more around policy including internet governance. This week’s meeting also has a couple of sessions on the role of women in technology, DNS, IoT and “abuse”.
It’ll be a busy and rewarding week hopefully!