NARRATIVE REPORT 2009 - The ICHRP

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International Council on Human Rights Policy - Narrative Report 2009 When the meeting took place, the project was in mid-course, having completed the main research phase. At this point, the Research Director responsible for the project, Stephen Humphreys, was appointed to the post of lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political Science (starting in September 2009), and it became necessary to refocus the project and its timetable. It was agreed, first, that authors of papers would reedit their work and resubmit it in November, providing a sound foundation for the project report. In parallel, ICHRP would explore the possibility of assembling the papers in a book that might be commercially published (as the Council had published Climate Change and Human Rights (reference 302) with Cambridge University Press). Secondly, it was agreed that Stephen Humphreys will draft the report in 2010, taking account of the outcomes of the Copenhagen climate change Summit that took place in December 2009. The Council’s final report will seek to position discussion of technology transfer and human rights in the post- Copenhagen context (thereby avoiding the adoption of a very short-term perspective). The timetable to which the Council is now working plans for the report to be drafted between March and April/May 2010, and published (after editing and consultation) in the fourth quarter of the year. Stephen Humphrey’s departure means, nevertheless, that the Council has lost expertise in this rapidly evolving area and will not be able to follow-up the report in the same manner. As it has tried to do in other cases when Research Directors leave mid-project, the Secretariat will seek to co-operate with one or more organisations that are actively involved in advocacy or policy research on climate change, with the aim of ensuring that the research findings are adequately disseminated and put to use. The project Technology transfer has been a key element of climate change negotiations from the outset, but until recently it has generated political contention more often than it has provided a solution for climate change harms. Since the Bali conference of December 2007 identified technology as one of four pillars of any future climate change settlement, however (the other three are mitigation, adaptation and finance), there has been increasing focus on the practical and legal elements of technology policy. Technology development, diffusion and transfer is needed both to help poorer and more vulnerable countries and communities adapt to the inevitable and immediate consequences of climate change and to help them move onto low carbon development pathways in the longer-term. Human rights are relevant to the technology questions that arise in both these policy areas - adaptation policies in the short-term and mitigation measures over the longer-term. At the same time, highlighting the human rights benefits of technological interventions may create a space for reframing the unsustainable dynamic between blocs of countries that has largely characterised debate of this subject to date. In this regard, human rights offer a strong ethical and legal basis from which technology transfer debates could be approached. The report will have value for a variety of actors but will be written primarily for policy-makers who have responsibility for designing and negotiating transfer technology programmes and agreements in the context of climate change. It will be written secondly for human rights and other civil society organisations that wish to engage with transfer technology and climate change and to influence the content of those programmes and agreements. The project will achieve its policy objectives if, first, human rights considerations come to be included more frequently in discussions of technology transfer and climate change; and secondly, if climate change programmes and agreements come to take more explicit account of the technology needs of 20
International Council on Human Rights Policy - Narrative Report 2009 groups exposed to particular risks, including people and communities who are exceptionally poor, uninformed or marginalised. A third and broader objective is to create more clarity concerning the claims on justice that different parties make in relation to climate change. The negotiating process and the politics of climate change - including advocacy concerning technology transfer - is driven by different notions of justice that are to an extent inconsistent. Because a human rights analysis can help to clarify and position different claims to justice, and because it protects those who suffer from injustice most sharply, it can assist the formation of a more objective and constructive discussion of this exceptionally demanding issue, which will require sacrifice and generosity from people in every country. Research director: Stephen Humphreys (to September 2009); Robert Archer (to May 2010). Design: Quarter 3 and 4, 2008. Start: Quarter 1, 2009. Draft report: May-June 1020 (revised). Consultation: August-September 2010 (revised). Working title: Human Rights in Climate Technology Policy. In English. Summary in French, Spanish and English. Publication: Report: Quarter 4 2010 (tbc). Briefing paper series: June-October 2009. Research team: The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), the Stockholm Environmental Institute, Maria Julia Oliva, Professor John Barton, Professor Simon Caney, Sisule Musugu (and one other still to be identified). Advisers: Dinah Shelton, Simon Caney, Sivan Kartha, MJ Mace, Balakrishnan Rajagopal. Privacy and technology 5 (132) Discussion Paper scheduled for the last Quarter of 2010 or early in 2011 This project examines the impact of new technologies on personal autonomy and the notions of privacy and the right to privacy. A considerable amount of preparatory work was done for this project in the course of 2008 and 2009, by Stephen Humphreys, the Research Director responsible for the project, but also by Andrea Pavoni and Anna Piekarzewski, two post-graduate interns at the Council, who prepared background reports on various aspects of the issue. The project was due to start research in the course of 2009, and was to have examined the concept of privacy, and the implications for privacy of technological change, from a variety of different angles (see below). In September 2009, however, Stephen Humphreys was appointed to the post of lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and it became necessary to reconfigure the project and its timetable. It has been agreed with Stephen Humphreys that he will draft a Discussion Paper on the theme of privacy and new technology, which will pull together the different pieces of research that have been started. The Paper will aim to map the relevant issues and identify and discuss some of the key questions, at least in a preliminary manner. 5 Project 132 was formerly titled Information-gathering Technologies and Human Rights. 21
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