Non-state actors and law-making in IBHR : the internet intermediaries’ responsibility to respect human rights and the UNGPs’ non-state-based grievance mechanisms

Abstract

This paper seeks to focus on how non-state actors, such as Internet Intermediaries, have gained an important role in International Business and Human-Rights (IBHR) law-making. Their contribution was up until recently mostly through their community guidelines, but a novelty to their involvement (by which we could consider that they assert greater responsibility in the aftermath of their technology), is the highly-specialised non-judicial business-related body, a proactive approach taken by the company in recognising and directly responding to human rights-related grievances by implementing a remedy. In this context, this paper will focus on the Meta Oversight Board and will consist of five sections, proceeding in the following manner. The first section introduces the human rights due diligence model to which UNGPs refer to in Principle 17. The second section seeks to determine whether the Supervisory Board is a non-State-based grievance mechanism as referred to in Principle 29. The third section analyses some of the Board’s decisions against the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case-law. Lastly, the fourth section will address the global effect of the Board’s decisions, while the fifth section concludes.