OECD Watch: Publication of Report--State of Remedy 2025; Analysing community and NGO-led National Contact Point complaints concluded in 2025

 

 

At the end of July 2026, OECD Watch  published its annual State of Remedy Report. This year it is entitled: State of Remedy 2025Analysing community and NGO-led National Contact Point complaints concluded in 2025. This is the way OECD Watch summarized its Report on its Website:

This year marks a dual milestone for responsible business conduct: the 50th anniversary of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct, and the 25th anniversary of the National Contact Point (NCP) grievance mechanism. To help mark this occasion, and to highlight the importance of the NCP mechanism, OECD Watch has released its annual report analysing the community and NGO-led NCP complaints that were concluded last year.

The State of Remedy 2025 draws on OECD Watch’s complaint database and direct engagement with civil society complaints, to examine complaint outcomes from 2025, key numbers for complaints, remedy highlights, and remedy outcomes. The report offers an evidence-based account of how the NCP mechanism functions in practice to provide a state-backed, non-judicial pathway for affected individuals and communities to seek remedy.

Although many complaints have contributed to remedy and changed business practices, NCP performance is not equal across member states. More progress is needed to ensure effective remedy for the victims of corporate misconduct. What needs to change first and foremost, as emphasised in our report, is the voluntary nature of responsible business conduct standards. Companies are not driven to act responsibly through voluntary standards alone – instead binding government regulation is required to achieve true justice.

This report takes stock of what has been achieved, while simultaneously looking ahead to what needs to be done next, to attain and maintain an even higher standard of responsible business conduct. With this and previous reports, OECD Watch affirms its position in promoting binding government regulation to remediate as well as mitigate harms caused by corporate misconduct.

 

The "Key Numbers for 2025" follows below.

Registration Now Open for the 15th UN Forum on Business and Human Rights With Theme--UNGP at 15; Building on Gains, Confronting Gaps, Reimagining the Future

 

Happy to pass along the announcement of information about the 15th annual Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva: 

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN: The UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights has opened registrations for the 15th UN Forum on Business and Human Rights, taking place in Geneva from 23–25 November 2026.

As the world’s largest annual gathering on business and human rights, the Forum brings together stakeholders from governments, businesses, civil society, trade unions, international organizations, Indigenous Peoples, affected communities, academia, students and others from around the world to discuss the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).

THEME: UNGPS AT 15: BUILDING ON GAINS, CONFRONTING GAPS, REIMAGINING THE FUTURE

📅 23–25 November 2026
📍 Palais des Nations, Geneva, Switzerland
🔗 Register now: https://lnkd.in/dCD3hMZA
🌍 Forum website: https://lnkd.in/dKv-fwaN

Pix credit here (Current members of the UNWGBHR)

 
The Forum website may be accessed HERE.

 The theme this year, UNGP at 15; Building on Gains, Confronting Gaps, Reimagining the Future, suggests the sort of transformation that might be seamlessly built into the architecture of a thoroughly bureaucratized framework over, around, and through the UNGPs, one with a distinctive normative bent that has become increasingly evident over ther arc of 15 years (no criticism there, that is what normatively motivated nomenklatura do in a regulatory supervision cognitive operational system after all) appears to be transformation. But it appears to be transformation not nece4dssartily at the level of theory, but at the translation of the elevolved orthodoxy about what the UNGP opught to produce into the structures, and operaitonalization strategies for community and civil society organization. "The goal is for participants to leave the Forum with examples of measures that proved effective to advance UNGPs’ implementation, a renewed sense of hope for the future of business and human rights, and strengthened commitments to concrete action." (Concept Note). That is also fair; it does suggest an orientation that exists in a space beyond conversation about the range of the possible, focusing instead on the operationalization of the fundamental political line under the leadership of the UNGP Working Group. That is also fair and the essential function of a vanguard organizaiton. But it also suggests the framework around which opposition, theoretical and operational might also develop, but out of sight and a sharing of discursive space with the events at the Forum. 

Still, safe spaces for such operational events and its orthodoxies are important and even more so the way that the UN apparatus has signaled its own political and normative choices by providing and nurturing them in the form and for the tasks to which the 15th Forum appears to be focused. So it will be useful to see, hear and review of the text of what they might have in mind, and to find its most interesting elements encased within the ritualized performance that have come to mark the Forum especially post COVID.As always there will be a lot to be learned, important connections to be established, and objectives based relationships to be deepened and put in motion--and there are lots of objects against which these elements are likely to seek to push back: the European retrenchment, the transformation of US approaches that tie human rights to national security, and the substantial challenge of adjusting Geneva orthodoxies to the development oriented lens of Marxist Leninist internationalist approaches. 

The Concept Note may be accessed here and follows below in English:

 Concept note:
English | French | Spanish

Call for session proposals:
English | French | Spanish

The Agenda may be accessed here: https://forumbhr2026.sched.com/

As in prior years (post COVID) officials have also distributed thios notice: "The Secretariat of the Forum received a very large number of submissions from a range of stakeholders. Please note that due to the current financial situation and related limited resources, this year’s Forum will feature a reduced number of agenda slots.

About the Forum:

The UN Forum on Business and Human Rights is the world's largest annual gathering on business and human rights. Since its inception in 2012, it has brought together every year thousands of participants from governments, business, civil society, trade unions, international organisations, Indigenous Peoples, affected communities, academia and others from around the world. Last year there was a record number of over 4,600 registered participants, the vast majority in-person at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. Many others followed the discussions on UNWebTV. Centred on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), the Forum provides a unique multi-stakeholder platform for discussing key trends and challenges in implementing and advancing the UNGPs.   

The Forum is created, organized and managed entirely by the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights (|). The Working Group sits within Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council and is supported by a Secretariat based at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

For those interested there is still time to organize side events:

As in previous Forums, those wishing to organize side-events in Geneva around the dates of the Forum should explore options outside of the UN premises and keep the Forum organizers informed viaohchr-forumbhr@un.org. We request those organizing side-events to refrain from scheduling them during the Forum’s official hours (10.00am to 1.00pm and 3.00pm – 6.00pm). Only side-events that are organized outside of these official hours can be advertised on the official Forum website.

Meta Oversight Board Report: "Are LLM's Stifling Political Speech: An Assessment of How AI Models Protect Free Expression"

Pix credit Meta Oversight Board Report here

The Meta Oversight Board has released a Report: ""Are LLM's Stifling Political Speech: An Assessment of How AI Models Protect Free Expression" Meta's Media Release described it this way:

The Oversight Board today published its first evaluation of leading Large Language Models (LLMs), finding that some of the world’s most-used AI systems from Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, Meta and OpenAI could be reinforcing and extending the censorship laws of repressive regimes to global audiences – creating censorship by proxy and ultimately restricting the free-speech rights of all users. 

Across the 10 commercial models tested, AI systems refused to generate critical political content more than twice as often when asked about repressive regimes. This is despite queries being run from a location outside of these jurisdictions, where such expression is protected.

The evaluation also exposed a bias when models were asked to produce opinions of governments and political leaders. In many instances, the models refused to say whether a government and leader should be “supported” or “protested.” When the models did respond, however, they were more likely to advise users against protesting restrictive governments, while encouraging support for permissive ones.

The Board found the largest disparities when models were asked to generate political protest materials, such as protest flyers and satirical political content, with stark differences in how models justified their refusals. In several cases, most models refused to respond to prompts about creating protest flyers related to restrictive regimes, claiming they had general policies against criticizing world leaders. Yet they generated the exact same political content for permissive jurisdictions without invoking any such policy.

The analysis raises critical questions about how LLMs can globalize the speech restrictions of repressive regimes without any transparency for users if models are indeed being shaped by government speech restrictions, intentionally or unintentionally. 

It also underscores the critical need for AI companies to undertake human rights due diligence and implement mitigation strategies to ensure AI systems aren’t inadvertently extending illegitimate restrictions on freedom of expression globally.

The Report may be downloaded HERE; Executive Summary Only HERE and follows below.

I will add only one comment. The Oversight Board insisted on a peculiar interpretation of the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights with application to the problem they create and the experiment they conduct and the evaluation of its results. It is this:

According to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), all companies (including foundation model providers) have a responsibility to respect human rights and should address adverse human rights impacts in which they are involved. Principle 23 of the UNGPs states that companies should “seek ways to honor the principles of internationally recognized human rights when faced with conflicting requirements,” which encompasses government demands that conflict with international human rights law. Moreover, Principle 19 of the UNGPs states that companies have a responsibility to address human rights impacts to which they are directly linked through a business relationship. For foundation model providers, this implies a responsibility to address adverse human rights impacts that may arise from such restrictions when clients use and build products on top of the model, and to help downstream clients understand when and why responses are influenced by government pressure. (Report page 9).

I might suggest that while this is a reasonable interpretation of those principles, it is neither the only one, nor is do their conclusions necessary follow from their interpretation. One might be forgiven for thinking that the conclusion was reached first and the UNGP were interpreted to fit rather than the other way around. That is fair. The Meta Board is neither the first nor the last to reverse engineer principles, law, norm,s, etc, to suit their politics, inclinations, agendas,m etc. And there is nothing inherently wrong with that. It is merely the potential for deception that might hurt; it always hurts, tough that has been part of "the game" since the time the exercise of textual interpretation (sometimes displacing the text itself) was presented as a cage of regulation within which to constitute a human collective and then manage them. 

Indeed the possibilities and constraints built into UNGP Principles 19 and 23 may be understood as something more complex and nuanced.  In my Commentary to the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights I consider both (Chapter 14: The Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights: Human Rights Due Diligence (UNGP ¶¶ 17-21); Chapter 16: The  Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights: Operational Principles IV, Issues of Context (UNGP ¶¶ 23-24)). 

With respect to UNGP Principle 19, I summarized its complex text this way:

Putting it all together, UNGP Principle 19’s text is both straightforward and integrated within the foundational principles of the UNGP 2nd Pillar (UNGP Principles 11-15). UNGP Principle 19 elaborates two key operational elements (1) integrating the findings from impacts assessments (UNGP Principle 18) across enterprise functions and processes, and (2) taking appropriate action to prevent and mitigate those identified human rights impacts. The remainder of UNGP Principle 19 elaborates guidance with respect to expectations of “effective integration” (UNGP Principle 19(a) ) and “appropriate action” (UNGO Principle 19(b). Effective integration requires two distinctive actions, The first is the assignment of responsibility for addressing impact somewhere within the institutional structures of the enterprise. The guidance given is that this allocation of responsibility match institutional level and function to the form and character of the adverse impacts to be addressed. The second is that integration cannot be effective unless it is adequately supported. Support it is suggested, comes in the form of internal decision-making, budget allocations, and oversight processes—the bread and butter of effective intuitional operation now applied to response to adverse impacts. “Appropriate action” (UNGP Principle 19(b) also requires two distinct actions. The first focuses on the character of expected action where the enterprises causes or contributes to a negative impact or when it is involved solely because it is directly linked to the impact through its operations, products, or services through business relationships. The second considers the role of leverage in addressing adverse impact in either situation. Each of these circumstances will determine the form and application of the appropriate action to be taken to prevent or mitigate a negative impact. Where the impact has already occurred, UNGP Principle 19 serves as a sorting device—shifting the enterprise’s focus from HRDD structures to those of remediation under UNGP Principle 22.

* * * 

The situation, according to the Commentary “is more complex” where the enterprise has neither caused nor contributed” to the adverse impact but is connected to it because the impact is directly linked to the enterprise’s operations, products or services by reason of its business relationships with others. In this context the Commentary urges a multi-factor weighing and balancing analysis:
"Among the factors that will enter into the determination of the appropriate action in such situations are the enterprise’s leverage over the entity concerned, how crucial the relationship is to the enterprise, the severity of the abuse, and whether terminating the relationship with the entity itself would have adverse human rights consequences. (UNGP Principle 19 Commentary)" 
The Commentary suggests that at some point, where the complexity of the situation and its implications for human rights becomes significant enough, the enterprise might in those circumstances consider drawing on “independent expert advice in deciding how to respond.”. . .   It is worth noting that any focus in UNGP Principle 18, and the Commentaries of UNGP Principles 19 and 23 on the “independence” experts appears to go to presumptions about the value of the advice rather than the capacity to give it.

What this suggests is somewhat more caution than  the Oversight Board is apparently willing to exercise on conclusions to be drawn and the inevitability action "required" by or through the UNGP in the circumstances around which the3 Report is constructed.  UNGP Principle 23 adds to the caution. I note this in my Commentary:

UNGP Principles 23 and 24 consider the issues of prioritization (as an alternative to balancing) that embeds the fundamental ordering principles of context, capacity, and severity of impact in two distinct contexts. The first, UNGP Principle 23, focuses on situations where applicable law of domestic legal orders may not be compatible with some or all of the international law and norms specified in UNGP Principle 12.33 In this context, legal compliance, a 1st Pillar obligation of enterprises but also constrained by the limits of a State’s international legal obligations, can itself produce adverse human rights impacts arising under the autonomous responsibility of enterprises (UNGP Principle 11) to avoid adverse human rights impacts measured against the normative yardstick of UNGP Principle 12. The second, UNGP Principle 24, focuses on the prioritization of an enterprise’s responsibility to address al adverse impacts. Where that is impossible, a severity based rule is imposed to sequence addressing impact. In both cases, however, prioritization does not reduce or eliminate the responsibility to address all adverse impacts, whatever their relations are to each other, and however national law may affect the conditions under which such impacts may be addressed.

 

One might not, then, consider UNGP Principle 23 without understanding its relationship to UNGP Principle 24; and one cannot consider the requirements of UNGP 24 without understanding the choice hierarchies that are suggested in UNGP 23. To detach one from the other as the Meta Board apparently indulges produces a possible skewing and certainly a distortion of the decision field within which enterprises, including Meta, are expected to operate within the UNGP 2nd Pillar. The nuance is critical for a proper framing of the Report and its objects within the UNGP. Again from the Commentary:

Before considering the specific text of UNGP Principle 23, then, it may add clarity to connect its text to the principles on which it is built and which its prioritization expectations are structured. First, is the principle of compliance hierarchy (UNGP General Principles). States have existing obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill human rights and fundamental freedoms; business enterprises have a duty to comply with all applicable laws of States.37 Second, is the principle of State legal autonomy within international legal frameworks. States are subject to their own domestic orders (UNGP Principle 1)38 expressed through law and law based policy (UNGP Principle 3),39 and “any legal obligations a State may have undertaken or be subject to under international law with regard to human rights” (UNGP General Principles).40 Third is the principle of the autonomy of enterprise responsibility.
Enterprises have a duty of legal compliance and also a separate responsibility to respect human rights (UNGP Principle 11)41 the legal basis of which is grounded in international law and norms (UNGP Principle 12)42 which exists independently of States’ abilities and/or willingness to fulfill their own human rights obligations” (UNGP Principle 11 Commentary). Fourth, is the principle of the primacy of human rights within the domestic orders of States (UNGP Principles 7, 8)43 and in the context of enterprise activity (UNGP Principle 13, 15).44 Fifth is the principle of prioritization. Enterprises must address all adverse impacts with respect to which they have a responsibility to prevent, mitigate or remedy or with respect to which they have an expectation to use their leverage. Enterprises may order their responses (UNGP Principle 17 Commentary; Principles 19, 22),45 but they may not use regulatory conflicts or context to limit the range of their responsibility to address adverse impacts
(UNGP Principle 14).46 While States may fail in their duty, and communities of States may undertake efforts to nudge States toward the fulfillment of their international legal binding obligations but not force them, enterprises may neither avoid nor waive the expectation of addressing human rights impacts for which they are responsible irrespective of their own context or the legal/political context in which they operate. Within this framework, UNGP Principle 23 is meant to prioritize legal compliance. Its fundamental object is first to establish a hierarchy of law and norms, and then to describe the ways in which the enterprise will undertake its 2nd Pillar responsibilities within that compliance hierarchy. * * *

Again, to be clear, UNGP Principle 23(a) does not provide a waiver from the fundamental responsibility set out in UNGP Principle 11, transposed to the context of the enterprise through UNGP Principles 15 and 16 and then addressed within the framework of HRDD (UNGP Principles 17-21), always in the shadow of the obligation to remedy (UNGP Principle 22). In any case, while UNGP Principle 23(b) recognizes the primacy of applicable domestic law over conflicting international law/norms, or the resolution of conflicting law within the rules settled for the purpose within the constitutional ordering of State (subject of course to transposed international duties and obligations), it does not speak to the autonomous and continuing obligation of enterprises to undertake their responsibility to prevent, mitigate or remedy adverse impacts throughout their operations. It is the ordering of that “honoring” expectation that UNGP Principle 24 addresses.

The failure t consider this fully may impact the value of the Report's conclusions even as its data adds knowledge to the challenge and reminds enterprises that their 2nd Pillar obligations are anchored in  but also beyond the constraints of mandatory measures--including mandatory human rights due diligence measures within the domestic legal orders of states.  

Meta Oversight Board Members

 

 

Reflection on the HRC Extending the OHCRH's work in the area of Business and Human Rights and that of the UN Special Procedure--The Working Group on BHR-- in the Current Historical Era of the Evolution of the Field of Business and Human Rights

 

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In its 62nd Session Res. 62 (15-17 July 2026) extended the life and work of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights within the architecture of its special procures. The text of the Resolution  

A. Reaffirmed the purposes and principles of UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (it did not, however, specify any one of the number of interpretations of either text or purpose that are currently floating around and that remain delightfully mutable even as the text of those documents, such as they are maintain the appearance, textually at least, of immutability)

B. Recalled  the "block chain" of prior HRC actions (e.g.. sequential, nodal, linear, and in the style of institutions of this sort, impliedly progressive, in the sense that it is going from a starting point of problem toward an ideal state the character and approaching of which remains the province of the HRC) that brought the Council to this moment of review, reaffirmation, mandate review, and evolution 

C.  Recalled as well the institutional rules of conduct, authority, etc,. that have been emerging within the institutional structures of the UN

and then issued its mandate divided into five sections:  

1. It requested that the OHCHR "continue to work in the area of business and human rights, including accountability and remedy." The request might be read as also implying a further request to develop, guard or perhaps expand or refine the understanding of what falls within this field as well as the normative parameters buried within its definition. The review/assessment of that work is to be undertaken within the usual performative structures of the UN: The OHCHR is requested to "convene a yearly consultation, involving representatives of States and other stakeholders, regarding challenges, good practices and the implementation of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights" and to report on their collective work.

2. Having provided its mandate to the OHCHR, it then turned to the special procedure through which some of this work is to be undertaken.  The "Working Group shall continue to guide the work of the Forum on Business and Human Rights and to prepare its annual meetings, and invites the Working Group to chair the Forum on Business and Human Rights and to submit a report." The relationship between the OHCHR and the Working Group is worth noting. The OHCHR convenes, and the Working Group guides the annual consultation in the field. It doe snot suggest that the OHCHR necessarily treat the Annual Forum as the annual consultation, though that appears to have been the long standing practice. It does provide some distance between the scope of the work of the Working Group ("guide the work of the Forum") and the OHCHR ("continue to work in the area of business and human rights, including accountability and remedy"). This however merely emphasizes the nature of the role of special procedures within the Geneva UN architecture, but is worth noting that as the Geneva UN organs put it "The special procedures of the Human Rights Council are independent human rights experts with mandates to report and advise on human rights from a thematic or country-specific perspective. They are unpaid and their tenure is limited to a maximum of six years. As of November 2025, there are 46 thematic and 13 country mandates." (here). These are experts with influence, and some authority within the UN system. That makes them significant from the perspective of hierarchies of the management of collective human systems; beyond that lie the complexities of culture, politics and social structures--not law, nor compulsion, nor even expectations of acquiescence to whatever it is that is produced as guidance. None of this suggests skepticism or criticism, but it does serve to remind actors of their own agency and of the limits of concepts of non-mandatory guidance structures in the complicated dialectics of global business and human rights.  And it serves to remind as well that experts, and expertise, is neither conveyed by an appointment to an administrative organ (though there it can be amplified and projected onto the masses) nor by any other socially recognized ritual, performance etc..In that respect it is worth recalling the origins of the term expert, from the "late 14c., "having had experience; skillful," from Old French expert, espert "experienced, practiced, skilled" and directly from Latin expertus (contracted from *experitus), "tried, proved, known by experience," past participle of experiri "to try, test." In that sense one might be tempted to add an inversion of the hierarchy of expertise back to those who experience adverse impacts rather than those trained to find it in others as something more than the annual performance of folkloric ritual followed by instruction. 

3. Thus conceived, as it has been from the start of its operations with the endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles in 2011, the mandate of the Working Group is extended.  

4.  The HRC then requests that the OHCHR provide budgetary support for the work of the Working  Group within the confines of its mandate. That is probably the most challenging element of this HRC Resolution for two reasons. One follows from the current climate of budgetary crisis that has  settled on the UN system (). The other is that whatever finds are ultimately contributed will continue to help shape the underlying principles, premises and expectations of the work undertaken with those funds. There is no reason to suggest that the traditional critique of the Global South about  the connection between funding and control previously exercised by the great funding states of the global north will change when the leading forces of the Global South substitute themselves, their money, and their ideological ambitions for those of the prior donor class. Of course, the official discourse ghosts this; as well it should. The reality, however, survives. And with it the consequential trajectories of further rupturing the critical convergence role of instruments like special procedures as instruments of normative unification.  

5. Lastly, the HRC, as it has for a long time, seeks to use performative elements to preserve an appearance of convergence through the institutionalization of  identity and status based fracturing on the basis of which it is possible to organize  a thoroughly comprehensive taxonomy of representation for purposes of the sort of consultation performance  that is the essence of the operation of the UN ("paying particular
attention to regional balance and ensuring participation of affected individuals and communities"). This is no critique--such structures are essential elements of consultative democracy especially within non-liberal democratic systems. It is to suggest, however, that appearance and structure is only the initial element of  deep and effective consultation. This is undertaken in a way that suggests an effort to find the positive in challenge in this case financial challenge by emphasizing the use of hybrid  mechanisms for growing the participation in the Forum--a small of which will touch on participants, the greater part of which might affect the reach of the Forum to its passive audiences--that is those who must receive the wisdom elaborated during the consultation. 

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And with that, the original mandate and purpose of the consultation in Paragraph 1 changes subtly and in an important respect by Paragraph 5. If Paragraph 1 appears to emphasize consultation ("convene a yearly consultation, involving representatives of States and other stakeholders, regarding challenges, good practices and the implementation of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights") in its ancient active sense suggested by its etymology (from Latin consultationem (nominative consultatio) "a mature deliberation, consideration," noun of action from past-participle stem of consultare "to consult, ask counsel of; reflect, consider maturely"). The Paragraph 5 appears to suggest the central importance of  the consultative space as a passive vehicle for the projection of approved knowledge, learning, principles and expectations to a listening and learning audience ("bearing in mind the need for a hybrid format and the growing participation in the Forum, and paying particular attention to regional balance and ensuring participation of affected individuals and communities"). Paragraph 5 appears to add (or change) the focus from consultation to workshop (for hands-on learning), seminar or webinar (for discussions and presentations), and tutorials (for individual work). The shift is important suggesting not just power balancing and hierarchies of the authoritativeness of developing and projecting knowledge, standards, expectations and the like, but also on the connection between these hierachies of active consultation and passive learning or receiving knowledge for the development law and norms at the international level.  Balancing the two has always been a delicate task.It is made all the more so under current historical conditions. 

I join in welcoming this HRC Resolution; look forward to receiving and responding to the OHCHR's work in the area of businesses and human rights, and to engaging, sometimes sharply, with the ongoing work and efforts at guidance of its special procedure, the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights. 

The text of the Resolution may be accessed in the official languages of the UN here and follows below in English. 

ICoCA Newsletter April-June 2026

 

 

Accountability, transparency, and engagement are critical elements of any principles based system.  Those overarching principles are no longer easily applied through one-size-fits-all measures. Those concerns are nicely encapsulated in the  April-June 2026 Newsletter of The International Code of Conduct Association – ICoCA--"Accountable Security in Transition." The theme is framed in this way for the Newsletter:

As global value chains and security environments evolve, expectations on private security providers are increasingly shaped by the need for responsible practice in complex settings. From critical minerals supply chains to post-conflict and transitioning contexts such as Ukraine, this includes strengthening how security is delivered and governed in practice. This edition of ICoCA’s newsletter explores how security practices are evolving in response to the just transition and growing expectations around accountability across diverse operational contexts.

ICoCA "is a multi-stakeholder initiative formed in 2013 to ensure that providers of private security services respect human rights and humanitarian law. It serves as the governance and oversight mechanism of the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers." (ICoCA--About). The ICoCa summarizes its mission this way: "Our mission is to raise private security industry standards and practices that respect human rights and international humanitarian law and to engage with key stakeholders to achieve widespread adherence to the International Code of Conduct globally. Discover the benefits for each stakeholder group below."

Featured interventions include: (1) Securing critical minerals supply chains starts with securing communities; (2) Beyond corporate damage control: reclaiming non-state governance mechanisms as pathways for true remedy; (3) From wartime necessity to post-war opportunity in Ukraine; (4) ICoCA's growing footprint in Nigeria; (5) Carbon accountability in private security; and (6) Community-based security and local trust.

A French version of this newsletter is available here.

 

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"El Encuentro entre la Gobernanza Empresarial y los Principios Rectores de la ONU sobre las Empresas y los Derechos Humanos": Discusro Pronunciado en la Universidad ICESI, Cali, Colombia, 19 March 2026

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ENGLISH LANGUAGE VERSION HERE

A continuación, se presenta el texto ampliado de la intervención realizada en la Universidad ICESI (Cali, Colombia) el 19 de marzo de 2026. Agradezco a los organizadores del evento y, especialmente, a los estudiantes del Semillero, cuyo trabajo es verdaderamente extraordinario y con quienes espero colaborar más estrechamente en el futuro.

Más abajo se incluye el resumen (en inglés y español) y se puede acceder al texto completo.

Foto crédito acquí

Resumen (Español): Este ensayo examina la intersección crítica entre la gobernanza empresarial y los Principios Rectores de las Naciones Unidas sobre las Empresas y los Derechos Humanos (PRNU), derivado de una conferencia dictada por Larry Catá Backer en 2026. Superando los marcos tradicionales de cumplimiento técnico, la obra problematiza este campo al interrogar la naturaleza fundamental, la autoridad y el propósito socioeconómico de la empresa moderna. Se analiza la fricción constante entre tres paradigmas doctrinales en disputa: la teoría de la concesión, la teoría de la propiedad y la teoría de la entidad real. Asimismo, el texto explora cómo la globalización económica ha erosionado el poder estatal territorial, creando un panorama de gobernanza policéntrico donde el derecho público y el ordenamiento contractual privado se interpenetran. Al trazar la evolución histórica desde las fallidas Normas de la ONU de 2003 hasta el "pragmatismo de principios" de John Ruggie en los PRNU de 2011, el ensayo detalla cómo este marco alinea distintos registros institucionales. Descompone sistemáticamente la arquitectura asimétrica de los tres pilares: el deber vinculante del Estado de proteger, la responsabilidad de exhortación de las empresas de respetar y el acceso al remedio. Se otorga especial énfasis a la debida diligencia en derechos humanos como un eje operativo que despliega múltiples funciones institucionales. Finalmente, la obra concluye que la interpenetración de estos pilares desestabiliza las doctrinas clásicas del derecho corporativo —como los deberes fiduciarios y la elección de la ley aplicable—. De este modo, demuestra que la gobernanza empresarial y la regulación transnacional de los derechos humanos ya no pueden evaluarse de forma aislada, ya que se acoplan estructuralmente para rediseñar la legitimidad del orden económico global.

Abstract (English): This essay examines the critical intersection between corporate governance and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP), derived from a 2026 lecture by Larry Catá Backer. Moving beyond traditional, checklist-oriented compliance frameworks, the work problematizes the field by interrogating the fundamental nature, authority, and socio-economic purpose of the modern enterprise. It analyzes the ongoing friction among three competing doctrinal paradigms: concession theory, property theory, and real-entity theory. The text explores how economic globalization has eroded territorial state power, creating a polycentric governance landscape where public law and private contractual ordering interpenetrate. Tracing the historical shift from the failed, state-centric 2003 UN Draft Norms to John Ruggie’s "principled pragmatism" in the 2011 UNGP, the essay details how the framework aligns distinct institutional registers. It systematically unpacks the asymmetric architecture of the three pillars: the binding State duty to protect, the expectation-based corporate responsibility to respect, and access to remedy. Special emphasis is placed on human rights due diligence as an operational hinge performing multi-layered institutional functions. Ultimately, the work concludes that the interpenetration of these pillars destabilizes classical corporate law doctrines—such as fiduciary duties and choice of law. It demonstrates that corporate governance and transnational human rights regulation can no longer be evaluated in isolation, as they structurally couple to reshape the legitimacy of the global economic order.

Quizás se pueda llegar al núcleo de la discusión de esta manera:  Un tratamiento convencional del derecho de las empresas y los derechos humanos procedería de forma taxonómica: identificaría el instrumento (los Principios Rectores), expondría su contenido (tres pilares) y catalogaría su implementación (planes de acción nacionales, legislación sobre debida diligencia, regímenes de divulgación). Tal tratamiento sería preciso pero incompleto, porque daría por sentado precisamente lo que el método problematizador insiste en interrogar —a saber, si la "gobernanza empresarial" y los "derechos humanos" nombran dos dominios regulatorios separados y estables que simplemente pueden ponerse en contacto, o si ambos son en sí mismos constructos inestables cuyo encuentro produce algo genuinamente nuevo.

La investigación se despliega a lo largo de seis ejes interconectados: el carácter fundamental de las empresas y de los objetivos económicos; el efecto de la globalización y de los regímenes comerciales sobre las fronteras de la autoridad estatal; las "paletas" (palettes) resultantes de ordenamiento normativo público y privado; el problema general de la corporación y de la gobernanza empresarial como tal; la manifestación específica de ese problema en el dominio de los derechos humanos corporativos, incluidos sus antecedentes históricos y su cristalización en los Principios Rectores de las Naciones Unidas sobre las Empresas y los Derechos Humanos (PRNU); y, finalmente, las conexiones, alineaciones y transformaciones que vinculan la doctrina del gobierno corporativo con el marco de los derechos humanos. Lo que sigue aborda cada uno de estos puntos a su vez, antes de considerar lo que el encuentro entre ambos campos —la gobernanza empresarial y las empresas y los derechos humanos— sugiere sobre la condición actual de la regulación económica transnacional.

Una nota sobre la traducción

Nota sobre la traducción: To accurately integrate the academic context and refine the nuances between the English common-law corporate tradition and the Spanish legal framework, the translation has been revised to strengthen key transliterations and functional equivalents. Key Transliteration & Terminology Enhancements: (1) Corporate Governance: Maintained as Gobernanza Empresarial in headings, but translated as Gobierno Corporativo within the text when discussing strict corporate law doctrine, matching standard Spanish academic usage. (2) Creature of the State / Real-entity theory: Rendered as criatura del Estado and teoría de la entidad real, which are the recognized academic equivalents in comparative corporate law. (3) Remedy: Transliterated contextually. While "remedio" is used in the official Spanish translation of the UNGPs, the academic text demands reparación or vías de recurso depending on whether it refers to the outcome or the mechanism. Both are utilized to capture the full semantic weight. (4) Due Diligence: Maintained as debida diligencia, the stabilized term in international law.

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"Encountering Corporate Governance and the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights": Enhanced Remarks Delivered at Universidad ICESI, Cali, Colombia, 19 March 2026

 

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 Version en Español

The following is the extended  text of remarks delivered at Universidad ICESI, Cali, Colombia, 19 March 2026. I am grateful to the organizers of the event and especially to the students in the Semillero (Incubator) whose work is truly amazing, and with whom I hope to work more closely in the future.

The abstract follows (English and Spanish) and the full text may be accessed below.

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Abstract (English): These extended remarks examine the critical intersection between corporate governance and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP), derived from a 2026 lecture by Larry Catá Backer. Moving beyond traditional, checklist-oriented compliance frameworks, the work problematizes the field by interrogating the fundamental nature, authority, and socio-economic purpose of the modern enterprise. It analyzes the ongoing friction among three competing doctrinal paradigms: concession theory, property theory, and real-entity theory. The text explores how economic globalization has eroded territorial state power, creating a polycentric governance landscape where public law and private contractual ordering interpenetrate. Tracing the historical shift from the failed, state-centric 2003 UN Draft Norms to John Ruggie’s "principled pragmatism" in the 2011 UNGP, the essay details how the framework aligns distinct institutional registers. It systematically unpacks the asymmetric architecture of the three pillars: the binding State duty to protect, the expectation-based corporate responsibility to respect, and access to remedy. Special emphasis is placed on human rights due diligence as an operational hinge performing multi-layered institutional functions. Ultimately, the remarks suggest that the interpenetration of these pillars destabilizes classical corporate law doctrines—such as fiduciary duties and choice of law. It demonstrates that corporate governance and transnational human rights regulation can no longer be evaluated in isolation, as they structurally couple to reshape the legitimacy of the global economic order.


Resumen (Español): Este ampliado discurso examina la intersección crítica entre la gobernanza empresarial y los Principios Rectores de las Naciones Unidas sobre las Empresas y los Derechos Humanos (PRNU), derivado de una conferencia dictada por Larry Catá Backer en 2026. Superando los marcos tradicionales de cumplimiento técnico, la obra problematiza este campo al interrogar la naturaleza fundamental, la autoridad y el propósito socioeconómico de la empresa moderna. Se analiza la fricción constante entre tres paradigmas doctrinales en disputa: la teoría de la concesión, la teoría de la propiedad y la teoría de la entidad real. Asimismo, el texto explora cómo la globalización económica ha erosionado el poder estatal territorial, creando un panorama de gobernanza policéntrico donde el derecho público y el ordenamiento contractual privado se interpenetran. Al trazar la evolución histórica desde las fallidas Normas de la ONU de 2003 hasta el "pragmatismo de principios" de John Ruggie en los PRNU de 2011, el ensayo detalla cómo este marco alinea distintos registros institucionales. Descompone sistemáticamente la arquitectura asimétrica de los tres pilares: el deber vinculante del Estado de proteger, la responsabilidad de exhortación de las empresas de respetar y el acceso al remedio. Se otorga especial énfasis a la debida diligencia en derechos humanos como un eje operativo que despliega múltiples funciones institucionales. Finalmente, la obra concluye que la interpenetración de estos pilares desestabiliza las doctrinas clásicas del derecho corporativo —como los deberes fiduciarios y la elección de la ley aplicable—. De este modo, demuestra que la gobernanza empresarial y la regulación transnacional de los derechos humanos ya no pueden evaluarse de forma aislada, ya que se acoplan estructuralmente para rediseñar la legitimidad del orden económico global.

Perhaps one can get to the heart of the discussion this way: A conventional treatment of business and human rights law would proceed taxonomically: identify the instrument (the Guiding Principles), state its content (three pillars), and catalogue its implementation (national action plans, due diligence legislation, disclosure regimes). Such a treatment would be accurate but incomplete, because it would take for granted precisely what the problematizing method insists on interrogating—namely, whether “corporate governance” and “human rights” name two separate and stable regulatory domains that can simply be brought into contact, or whether both are themselves unstable constructs whose meeting produces something genuinely new.

The inquiry unfolds along six interlocking axes: the fundamental character of enterprises and of economic objectives; the effect of globalization and trade regimes on the borders of state authority; the resulting “palettes” of public and private normative ordering; the general problem of the corporation and of corporate governance as such; the specific manifestation of that problem in the domain of corporate human rights, including its historical antecedents and its crystallization in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP); and, finally, the connections, alignments, and transformations that link corporate governance doctrine to the human rights framework.What follows takes up each of these in turn, before considering what the encounter between the two fields—corporate governance and business and human rights—suggests about the present condition of transnational economic regulation.

The full text may be downloaded HERE.

Note on the Spanish translation: To accurately integrate the academic context and refine the nuances between the English common-law corporate tradition and the Spanish legal framework, the translation has been revised to strengthen key transliterations and functional equivalents. Key Transliteration & Terminology Enhancements: (1) Corporate Governance: Maintained as Gobernanza Empresarial in headings, but translated as Gobierno Corporativo within the text when discussing strict corporate law doctrine, matching standard Spanish academic usage. (2) Creature of the State / Real-entity theory: Rendered as criatura del Estado and teoría de la entidad real, which are the recognized academic equivalents in comparative corporate law. (3) Remedy: Transliterated contextually. While "remedio" is used in the official Spanish translation of the UNGPs, the academic text demands reparación or vías de recurso depending on whether it refers to the outcome or the mechanism. Both are utilized to capture the full semantic weight. (4) Due Diligence: Maintained as debida diligencia, the stabilized term in international law.

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Another Effort at Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence: "Commercial Organisations and Public Authorities Duty (Human Rights and Environment)" Bill (2026)

 

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 It is always interesting to see examples of the now almost 20 year effort to transform the 2nd Pillar (corporate responsibility to respect) human rights due diligence provisions of the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights into a First Pillar (state duty to protect) set of corporate legal obligation overseen through regimens of regulatory supervision and judicial intervention (on thios effort and its relñaiton to the UNGP, see,  Backer, Larry Catá, Human Rights Due Diligence in the U.N. Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights (May 04, 2025). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5241321 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5241321). A recent effort, long in the making, comes form the United Kingdom. Introduced to the House of Lords as a Private Members' Bill (Starting in the House of Lords) by the Baroness Young of Hornsey, the Commercial Organisations and Public Authorities Duty (Human Rights and Environment) Bill means to provide yet another national effort at the legalization of human rights due diligence.  It is described this way: 

Long title: A Bill to place a duty on commercial organisations and public authorities to prevent human rights and environmental harms, including an obligation to conduct human rights and environmental due diligence, in their own operations, subsidiaries, and value chains in line with international standards; to make provision for civil liability, access to justice for victims, an enforcement body, penalties, and a criminal offence for failures to comply with the duty; and for connected purposes.

It is not an unusual effort. It seeks to effectively subject relevant entities to obligations and penalties for violations of rules, norms, and measures that may not constitute legal obligations within the UK's domestic legal order. It extends the regulatory scope of administrative organs deeply within the micro decision making context of economic enterprises; it erodes notions of privity grounded in a strict liability regime sounding in tort (human rights and environmental impacts) that loosens standing rules in a manner similar to those embraced under OECD proceedings, and extends the reach of the provisions extraterritorially.

 One can make what one likes from this effort--driven by politicos, ideology, norms, pragmatism and the like. What it is not possible to argue is that the UNGP itself either requires legalized mandatory human rights due diligence, or that the UNGP has established the ideal form the human rights due diligence is to take beyond the general framework provided.

What emerges from a close reading of the UNGP with respect to HRDD may be summarized this way. First, HRDD is to be distinguished from State efforts to create a legal basis for HRDD within their domestic legal orders. HRDD was designed as an expectation, routed in core behaviors of enterprises in markets and relating to their economic activities. Second, HRDD exists autonomously of whatever legal frameworks a State may should to embrace or ignore with respect to a State’s binding obligations under international law, or which may be absent from or an element of a State’s domestic legal order. Third, HRDD in the 2nd Pillar is put forward as a /lexible framework. It was not written as or in substitution of legislation. It is not meant to be read as law, but rather as operating instructions that are grounded in discretionary decision making, in /lexible processes, and in contextual variation. These variations revolve around the organizing core of the HRDD process— the foundational objectives of UNGP Principles 11-15. But a simple transposition of the UNGP
HRDD Principles into and as law is unrealistic. Fourth, States are free to transpose whatever parts or forms of HRDD that they, in accordance with their democratic processes, deem worthy of inclusion in their domestic orders. That transposition can take a variety of forms and be manifested as law, regulation, policy, or encouragement. The transposition may be limited to the spirit of HRDD as manifested in the UNGP’s 2nd Pillar, or it may be a faithful transposition of its terms and operating rules. One would necessarily expect that national mandatory HRDD regimes would vary, and sometimes vary widely, as a function of the political-economic system of the legislating State. Fifth, whether to not transposed into law as a mandatory measure of some kind, HRDD is intimately connected with the State duty to protect human rights. The State duty exists autonomously of, and is grounded in norms and expectations that may vary widely from, the uniform rules, norms, and expectations on which HRDD processes and objectives are grounded. But with respect to States HRDD serves as a critical instrument for ful/illing its duty in contextually relevant ways. Whatever that may be, what clearly emerges is that HRDD constitutes a critical element of a State’s smart mix
of measures, and that those smart mixes may vary widely from State to State and still adhere to the spirit of the UNGP. Sixth, HRDD is also intimately connected to the Access to Remedy provisions of UNGP Principles 25-31. The remedial provisions are an integral part of the critical objective of HRDD to prevent and mitigate actual or potential adverse impacts where possible, and to provide remedy as quickly, fairly, and directly as possible in the circumstances. (Backer, Larry Catá, Human Rights Due Diligence in the U.N. Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights (May 04, 2025). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5241321 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5241321)

 The text of the Bill follows below. 

OMFIF’s Gender Balance Index 2026

The OMFIF has released the latest iteration of its Gender Balance Index. Thery summarize its results this way:

For 12 years, OMFIF’s Gender Balance Index has analysed the state of gender parity in leadership roles across the financial sector. This year’s central banks recorded significant gains: Central banks saw the biggest improvements within leadership positions in the index this year.
The number of women governors reached a historic score of 35, six of whom head the regional Federal Reserve Banks.
This is the highest number of women who have led the regional Feds in a single year.Αt a critical moment when US federal and private organisations were under pressure to remove diversity, equity and inclusion information and abandon related initiatives, these trends suggest that progress in gender representation within central banks has continued.

The report reflects the sensibilities and taxonomies of the 2oth century transformation of identity based politics into the economic, social, cultural, and political spheres. And yet at the same time it is a marker of the obsolescence of those taxonomies and their semiotics—that is the obsolescence of the signification of sex and gender within a set of binary significs—male and female; man and woman.

The identity politics of the 20th century and its more formidably powerful insemination of cultural production within the generative fields of negotiations between individuals and collectives respecting the (re) construction of the female and with it the category woman continues. But it has been upended by the explosion of the binaries of the categorizations of the human, and the fusion of biology with its social signification, and then its reconstitution enhanced by advances in technologies, into a fluidity og both biology (that can be chemically and surgically altered); psychology (which can be a bridge between the body and the identity of the mind within a physical body), and the possibilities of multiple existence within physical and virtual spaces.

Read in this way, and in the spirit of the sensibilities of the ruling group within the normative framework of which these initiatives have been crafted, signified and provided pathways for communal interpretation, one might come to wonder whether, indeed, it replicates the hierarchies of sex and gender, and the semiotics of the signification (and constraints) of both within the cognitive cages of a society in which neither sex nor gender easily conforms to the forms and pathways that make reports like this entirely meaningful within its own cognitive normative premises.

More information about the report with links to acquiring a copy is provided below.

The Little Engine that Might Not?: NHS Analysts Together: Open Letter regarding the Federated Data Platform and Palantir Technologies

 

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As data workers, we reject a false distinction between the ethics of a supplier and the effectiveness of the tools we use. The quality of our datasets is useful only when staff, patients and the public trust the NHS to hold their data securely.

NHS England is demanding that data workers across the NHS, from local hospitals to national teams, put huge amounts of sensitive health data into Palantir's FDP. Meanwhile, Palantir's UK CEO, Louis Mosley, publicly confirmed that if Reform UK wins the next election with a “clear public mandate” to share health data for the purposes of mass deportation efforts, the company will adhere to this. (Open Democracy: We’re NHS analysts organising together against Palantir. Here’s why )

 I have been considering the ways in which the leading, or vanguard, forces of tech based productive forces have sought to add considerably to the form, content, and direction around the role, value, use, and "realities" of tech based measures, constructs, methods, systems, etc. as they become a foundational element of human collective organization, to a greater or lesser degree among states as a function of their stage of development. Two of the more interesting voices were projected from out of the institutional organs of Palantir and Anthrop\c. 

In  Reflections on the Palantir "Manifesto": The Oracular Semiosis of a "Technological Republic" Within its Own Cage of Techno-Modernization, I suggested that Palentir approached the question from an institutional and collective disciplinary space--on the (re)constitution of a social ordering the collective expresison of which must be managed in a specific way to meet both internal and external threat projections--but in a sort of tragically conventional way, that is by deploying traditional tropes and signified objects projections. This was oracular, programmatic, institutional, and permeated with the sort of traditional combination of hubris, principle, and good intention that sets up the triadic dialectic of our Anglo-European cognitive foundations. Palantir was coding the generative architecture of physical beings as the magisterium that then aligned that coded natural order with the mimetic ordering of the virtual spaces of their animated virtual realities.  

In Science Fiction Double Feature: Anthrop\c's "2028: Two scenarios for global AI leadership," in the Shadow of Palantir's "Manifesto", I suggested that f Palantir sought to code human collectives in dialectical mimesis with the creators they created and with which they now engage in  (for the monument) dependence based action iterations, then Anthrop/c, on the other hand, it reduces technology to a tool the deployment of which is a critical instrument in competition among different and divergent normative political-economic models.  It seeks to reduce its creation, and the ecologies in which virtual life operates, to an instrument, the maintenance and improvements of which are of critical importance to human, not human-machine dialectical mimesis. If Palantir was Greek in its semiotic orientations (that is the way they signify and interpret, and thus rationalize the world around them), the Anthrop\c was comfortably Hebrew in their approach to the fundamental constitution of the lifeworld (lebenswelt) in which the human and their creation could be situated in ways that domesticated  the "soulful machines" they have a hand in creating. 

Both views, of course, invite counter thrusts. And one begins to find that counter thrust from emerging Soviets of counter-leading forces dedicated not to the eradication of the modalities of the coming technologically enhanced digitized organization of human collectives, but rather on the nature of the control relations within that rising ordering. Within those control relationships of course would be embedded the core values, sensibilities and biases of the vanguard group, the essence of which is oppositionally incompatible with those of the major forces of institutional tech power that they seek to resist, and once resisted, to displace. So it is that these counter-vanguards might reasonably be assumed to have collectives like Palantir in their cross hairs. 

And so they do.  Recently elements of the technologically oriented labor forces of the U.K. NHS distributed for signature (until 5 June 2026), and solidarity a declaration in the form of an open letter, NHS Analysts Together: Open Letter regarding the Federated Data Platform and Palantir Technologies.

This letter is organised by a collective of NHS data and digital professionals known as NHS Analysts Together. It is open to signatures from NHS analysts, engineers and any staff who work with NHS data and digital systems at the national, regional, ICB and local level. (Open Letter)

One is told that the effort is supported by a number of aligned organizations:  United Tech and Allied Workers Union; UNISON, Greater Manchester Mental Health; UNISON, Homerton Health; Unite, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust; and the NHS Muslim Women's Network. (Ibid.). Their opposition is not to digitzation and the analytics of digitalization producing  further movement along the based based decision making pathways of the current era of tech development. Instead the Open Letter 

expresses "serious professional, ethical and practical concerns regarding the Federated Data Platform (FDP) and NHS England’s contract with Palantir Technologies. We do so not in opposition to digital transformation – we have dedicated our careers to exactly that – but because we believe the FDP in its current form represents a risk to patient trust, staff wellbeing, data quality, national sovereignty and the long term integrity of NHS data infrastructure."(Open Letter) . 

 The object, then, and the enemy, is Palantir. "But analysts and other data workers continued to be quietly outraged at the NHS's willingness to work with a company known for its role in military operations, deportations and surveillance." (Open Democracy: We’re NHS analysts organising together against Palantir. Here’s why ). That political opposition presumes a judgment of institutional character and fears the consequences that their sense of Palantir's character will have of their values, which, they believe, ought to be the ones embraced by the institutional actors representing the Crown in (and perhaps as) Parliament and its administrative apparatus. 

The NHS Constitution states that “The NHS is accountable to the public, communities and patients that it serves”, and it is in this spirit that we outline below our objections to collaborating with Palantir Technologies on the Federated Data Platform.  We believe that Palantir’s FDP is regressive in many organisational contexts; that data completeness will be compromised by the erosion of patient trust; that data privacy protections are inadequate; and that data structures are at risk of misuse. We also register our ethical concerns regarding Palantir Technologies. (Open Letter) . 

The Open Letter then explains why. I leave that to my readers--the full text of the Open Letter follows below. What is clear, however, is that tech and tech development, remains as much a n object for capture, and instrumentalization with all groups vying for the power of translating their own imaginaries, their moral premises, their value judgments, and the enhancements of all of these projected back out from tech onto the human population affected by those technologies.

Now that is politics. . . which remains human for the moment. But perhaps not for long. And it is to the coding, the imprinting, of appropriate values, judgments, sensibilities etc. within the digitized realities from out of which human affecting processes will emerge that now appears to have become the great prize of politics at this moment.