Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Program

It’s no secret that there are governments around the world who don’t live up to widely recognized standards for protecting the free expression and privacy rights of their own citizens. While the root causes of these threats clearly lie with those governments, we also know that we, like all companies, have important human rights obligations. We created the Business & Human Rights Program to coordinate and lead Yahoo!'s efforts to protect and promote free expression and privacy.  The BHRP  represents another step forward in our commitment to human rights, and our effectiveness depends on the following pillars:

Executive Commitment

The BHRP depends upon our executive team's clear and visible commitment to human rights.

Dedicated and Cross-Functional Teams

The BHRP has dedicated staff and draws upon the expertise of Yahoo! employees across the company to continue its centralized leadership on global strategy, industry initiatives, business decision-making, and internal and external stakeholder engagement.

Guiding Principles and Operational Guidelines

We’re committed to the international foundations of freedom of expression and privacy, and are translating those principles into practical steps to be followed by our employees. Past and upcoming projects include employee engagement events around the globe, and targeted employee training on human rights policies and procedures.

Human Rights Touch-Point Inventory + Clearinghouse

We are constantly reviewing where our business intersects with potential human rights issues and ensuring that potential issues are routed to the right teams.

Human Rights Impact Assessments

We’re committed to exploring risks to freedom of expression and privacy in challenging markets, engaging with external stakeholders, and designing risk mitigation strategies. To learn more about how we conduct HRIAs, click here on this site.

Internal and External Stakeholder Engagement

Our most important stakeholders are our users, and we have begun to engage them through our blog.  We also maintain our strong relationships with industry peers, human rights groups, academics, and governments, including our own State Department.  The GNI is one way we stay connected; for more about the GNI, please see here.

Accountability Framework

We are working with the GNI on designing an effective system to assess our own performance in meeting our overall goals and our operational steps relating to human rights issues.