Consultation on ECNL's Framework for Meaningful Engagement: Key takeaways

In November 2022, ECNL and the Permanent Mission of Austria to the UN in Geneva organised a side event in the context of the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights, to discuss the role of companies in ensuring respect for human rights in the tech sector. As the theme of the Forum was “Rights Holders at the Centre”, we held an in-person session to discuss meaningful stakeholder engagement in the context of human rights impact assessments and broader due diligence for AI systems. Invited guests included members of civil society, private sector, academia, UN agencies, and member states.

The consultation drew on ECNL's work to develop the Framework for Meaningful Engagement, with input from 130+ consulted persons across sectors. The following are key takeaways from the consultation. They will inform and guide ECNL’s work going forward, which includes piloting the Framework with a European city, a UN agency and a technology company.

Guiding principles

1. Consultations must be conducted in good faith and be impact-driven. As new regulations increasingly mandate external stakeholder engagement, there is a risk that consultations are seen as a mere ‘check the box’ exercise. Yet there is a real business case in conducting meaningful engagement, from improving user experience in tech products and services, creating safer products, to avoiding legal, financial and reputational risks if harm occurs.
2. Consultations must impact the final product, including if that means shutting it down and/or removing it from the market. This issue is particularly important in the arms sector and surveillance technology, where there is intrusive and harmful impact on people and communities, and states have an outgrown influence in their role of developer, procurer and deployer of AI systems. 
3. Consultations must take a non-extractive approach rooted in transitional justice. Information cannot be shared one way only, where companies/governments take information from rights holders/CSOs and affected parties without communicating their own internal plans and information about products. They must also acknowledge and repair past harm, to rebuild trust. 
4. CSOs are not substitutes for rights holders, who should be given the opportunity to speak for themselves. However, they may help gather a rich and diverse representation of users/rights holders. Grassroots and community organisations that have worked for a long period of time with a specific group of rights holders may well be equipped to share their experiences and positions, too.

Ensuring diverse, inclusive, and independent consultation

1. Include organisations outside the US/Western Europe. This requires substantial resources and funding. It is also important to facilitate direct connections between these organisations and multinational companies conducting the consultation, as they often depend on European or US organisations, who could act as gatekeepers.
2. Diversify consulted groups and individual. Going beyond ‘the usual suspects’ requires more effort, but is a necessary step to avoid always consulting the same persons and/or organisations.  Engagement with grassroots organisations, unions, and local/regional CSOs, especially those that represent rights holders from marginalised groups, should be prioritised.
3. Consult with independent voices, especially those that may be critical of the company’s products, services or activities. Engaging only with paid consultants and/or aligned stakeholders defeats the purpose of the process and makes it performative. Consulted groups must have the agency and autonomy to define the engagement process and provide independent and impartial input.

Enabling and supporting participation

1. The AI developer or deployer should provide financial support and/or compensation to the consulted stakeholders. Because external stakeholders cannot or do not always want to accept compensation for engaging to ensure their independence, financial support should be considered holistically and in a way that best enables participation, including covering travel costs, facilitation expenses, etc.
2. Participants’ safety and security must be assured. This includes both physical safety and privacy, especially for marginalized groups including political dissidents and activists, as well as mental safety, when discussing difficult topics such historical and/or institutional harm and discrimination. 

 Connecting civil society input with other stakeholders’ work and responsibilities

1. Investors’ role and responsibilities should be considered.
2. Policymakers should translate and embed input from consultations into actual legislation and policy. 
3. Internal stakeholders across functions should closely collaborate. This includes coordinating between those who conduct the consultation, engineers and AI developers, and executive-level staff and members of the board of directors.
4. Collaborate with other actors developing and/or deploying similar products or services, to share learnings from the engagement and expand the benefits thereof to the broader industry and/or sector.