Adequate Procurement

States ought to adhere to certain formal processes for procuring and assessing the services of private companies for delivery of public duties. This is a fundamental principle of public procurement, essential for preserving the integrity of public spending and delivery of public functions. Through such procurement processes, both the state and the company ought to perform due diligence on each other to ensure they comply with their respective human rights obligations. Under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, companies are required to “avoid infringing on the human rights of others and should address adverse human rights impacts with which they are involved”, and to “know and show” that they do not infringe on human rights through their operations or business relationships.

In the context of PPPs for the deployment of technologies with potential impact on the enjoyment of human rights, procurement processes ought to be enhanced with certain safeguards and principles. These should ensure that proper assessments of impact have been performed, and that a certain technology isn’t being deployed for reasons other than its ability to fulfil the publicly approved and stated purpose (to prevent practices such as corruption, abusive lobbying, nepotism…). By requiring companies to adhere to human rights due diligence (‘HRDD’) obligations, states can also ensure that a technology has been properly assessed at its design and development stages, rather than solely at deployment stage. As to the post-deployment stage, the increasingly co-dependent, ongoing relationships between states and companies in the surveillance technology sphere call for similarly ongoing, accrued assessments and scrutiny throughout the partnership’s lifecycle.