IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2023 - 61

to address substantive and topical issues of human
rights and technology, they largely echo the jurisprudence
of regional courts. A good case in point is the
recent decision of the Human Rights Committee (HR
Committee) on data privacy where it drew heavily
on a seminal, albeit older, decision of the European
Court of Human Rights [55].
Echoes of European jurisprudence often lack
deeper consideration in jurisprudence of the Committee.
And, of course, one can point to a number of
structural factors that lead to such a shallow approach
to jurisprudence, including the Committee's parttime
role and frequent reshuffling of its membership.
The HR Committee meets only three times a year during
which it has to review periodic reports of States,
develop general comments, and adjudge individual
communications under the First Additional Protocol.
While substantive depth and rigor cannot be
expected in inherently abbreviated resolutions, iterations
of European jurisprudence reinforce the point
about the ambiguity of purpose-alluded to above-
in UN initiatives. However, the concern is that the
level of European influence is such that UN (treaty)
bodies rarely make reference to any of the relatively
progressive UN discourses on technology and human
rights. In considering this overall approach, it is safe
to conclude that apart from helping fulfill the above
unstated goal of " globalizing " progressive regional
and national standards, such iterative UN processes
are, by and large, redundant.
The EU's most successful regional approach to the
cross-cutting issues of human rights and technology
appears to be partly prompted by the difficulties of pursuing
a UN-led global response. Indeed, such a predicament-punctuated
further by Cold War politics-had
been one of the factors for European countries to essentially
abandon the Tehran process and pursue a more
regional approach through the OECD in the field of privacy
and data protection [56], [57].3 Apart from its influential
legal and regulatory framework in the field of data
privacy, the EU is also currently leading the global effort
of effectively responding to the regulatory and human
rights implications of emerging technologies such as AI.
A good case in point is the draft AI Act. This proposal for
a supranational legislation is meant to draw a balance
between the wide-ranging benefits of this " family of technologies "
and its negative impacts, including individual
rights [58].
3Stating that the Cold War confrontation led (Western) States to agree upon
measures at the regional level where there frequently is greater homogeneity to
reach agreement.
Making the discourse count
What the foregoing analysis reveals is that the trajectory
of the discourse has generally been disjointed.
But the question of how long that the Council would/
should continue to be seized of the matter remains.
Unless the UN and its bodies reimagine their role,
little is to be expected from this " new " phase of UN
discourse on human rights and technologies. With a
view to address the fragmentary tendencies of the discourse,
it is vital that a more focused approach is pursued
by the relevant UN bodies. Making the discourse
focused may be achieved through two mutually reinforcing
measures. One is streamlining the discourse
into the broader UN work in the field, particularly
the jurisprudence of treaty bodies. Indeed, this is
hinted in the latest resolution on neurotechnology
and human rights where the OHCHR, treaty bodies,
and special procedures of the HR Council are called
upon to consider within their respective mandates
the human rights implications of neurotechnologies
[59]. This is on top of the usual vow at the end of
each HR resolution to remain " seized of the matter. "
Although a similar clause does not exist in the other
resolutions, it provides the legal basis, for instance, to
treaty bodies and pertinent UN special rapporteurs
to closely consider the matter. Resolutions are, as
already noted, structurally truncated to provide much
normative content. But they are known to chart normative
and methodological directions which then
may well be followed by treaty bodies. A UN treaty
body directly related to human rights and emerging
technologies is the HR Committee, a body that oversees
the ICCPR. Guided by the resolutions, the HR
Committee could reorient its jurisprudence in a manner
that accounts for the multifaceted human rights
implications of new technologies. The Committee's
jurisprudential outputs such as concluding observations
developed as part of periodic state reports,
article-by-article or thematic general comments, and
case law could draw upon the resolutions.
Likewise, new and emerging technologies could
be brought into focus as part of the States' peer
review under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR)
mechanism of the HR Council. That way, the ongoing
discourse on new and emerging technologies
may find some coherence and gradually exert some
jurisprudential cross-influence. But the potential of
the discourse in shaping the jurisprudence of, for
example, treaty bodies, is inherently limited by structural
factors. One such factor is that treaty bodies
March 2023
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2023

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