My name is Tsering Dhongthog and I am joining the Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Program as a summer intern. Although I am a native of the Pacific Northwest, I attended a refugee boarding school in India and have always been deeply interested in human rights issues. While a college student at the University of Washington, I had the chance to spend my summers working with human rights organizations like the Tibet Justice Center, Human Rights Watch, and the International Rescue Committee. In 2006, after graduating college, I moved to Beijing and interned for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) where I worked with refugees fleeing violence in their home countries.

After nearly a year in China, I returned to the U.S. to pursue a master’s degree in China Studies at Columbia University. Through my courses and interactions with professors and visiting scholars, I became increasingly interested in the impact new social media and the internet in general has on civil society in China, especially in politically sensitive Tibet. The 2008 March protests across the Tibetan plateau was widely publicized in the international community, thanks in large part to social media sites that quickly generated first-hand accounts, photos, and videos of the turbulent scene. This demonstrated for me the growing role that the internet plays in social movements not only in China but all around the world.

I am currently a second-year law student at the University of Michigan. Last summer I interned in Washington D.C. for the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) where I researched and wrote on issues like freedom of expression and rule of law. At law school I have taken courses such as Mass Media, International Investment Law, and Foreign Corporate Governance. I have also written papers on these areas of law including Google’s China censorship issue, and on the growing trend of companies incorporating human rights into their corporate governance charters, using Starwood Hotels and Resorts as a case study. So when I learned about the legal internship with the Business & Human Rights Program at Yahoo! I was excited to find an opportunity that combines my interest in human rights and corporate law. I just hope I can contribute as much as I know I will absorb from this amazing opportunity!

We are thrilled for Michael and his wonderful family, and are so very grateful to have had the opportunity to work with him and learn from him.  We must admit, however, to being very sad to see him go. Michael has been a mentor, a friend, an inspiration, a voice of reason and a cat-herder par excellence. He also has, it must be acknowledged, truly spectacular hair.

Those of us who were fortunate enough to work with him will miss Michael very much, and below are some thoughts and stories from a few people, both inside and outside Yahoo!, who wish Michael and his family all the very best in their new adventure.

BB King, I’m Moving On

Harry Wu | Founder and Executive Director, Laogai Research Foundation

Dear Captain Ahab:

I wish you will be great at your new job. When you catch the whale please inform me right away. It is very important to celebrate. But, be careful, safety is number one.

Bob Boorstin | Director, Public Policy, Google Inc.

Good bye to Michael, we’ll miss you so much

Especially your calm and deft lawyerly touch

Again and again you’ve earned your laurels

And proved you’re no pygmy without morals

When the fate of our global initiative lay on a roll of the dice

You swooped in and took command like Crockett from Miami Vice

When push came to shove, you stood up for what was right

And never let the goal out of your keen sight

And now your wisdom is clear through all the commotion

As you take your family out into the ocean

Far away from the rigors of business and the hassles it begot

No new cases for you, just loved ones and that big ol’ yacht

Sail well, our friend, may your direction be true

And remember — big hint — land is brown and sea is blue

Have fun, enjoy the breeze and lay back in the sun

We’ll read your blog, see you soon and envy all your fun

Nicole Kempton | Washington Director, Laogai Research Foundation

Michael Samway has literally transformed the fortunes of our organization, and made the work we do possible.  The Laogai Museum would not exist without him, but more importantly, the Yahoo Human Rights Fund would not have been able to help so many individuals in China without his dedication and hard work.  Although we’re jealous of what promises to be the adventure of his life, he will be greatly missed!

Dunstan Hope | Managing Director, ICT Practice, Advisory Services, Business for Social Responsibility

Michael has been an incredible inspiration to all of us involved in the Global Network Initiative. I remember Michael making an instant impression in our first exploratory meetings in early 2006. Michael’s commitment to protecting human rights and understanding how human rights risks and opportunities arise in the internet age shone through instantly and has been with us ever since. Michael’s calm but committed approach will be missed.

Ena Harris | Director, Education for Change

My wish for you is:

“An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth.”

― Bonnie Friedman

Enjoy life and love and family, Michael!

Chris Samway | Corporate Strategy & Business Development, Gap Inc.

My brother Michael has always been my moral compass, an inspirational role model in work and life, and a true friend and mentor. He can also play just about any Jack Johnson song you can think of on his guitar- which is cool. Yahoo!’s been lucky to have him.

Colin Maclay | Managing Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University

I have had the great pleasure of interacting with Michael over the past four years in always unknown and often unfriendly territory. Throughout the ups and downs, he has been the consummate team player – deeply thoughtful and strategic in dealing with all manner of challenges; unfailingly (and ridiculously) modest when it comes to his substantial and diverse contributions; actively supportive of the personal and professional well-being of his colleagues both inside Yahoo! and elsewhere; and not only committed to the enterprise and willing to do everything he can to advance it. He has given a master class in both leadership and friendship to those around him. These skills will no doubt serve him well on the high seas, although I am certain that he will return both humbled and more able than ever – especially in otherwise arcane arts such as navigation, blues guitar, and relaxing.

Fair winds and following seas!

Richard Harris III | Director, Breakthrough Collaborative

Michael is a great dude. Besides being one of the few people in the world who went to Duke that I actually like, Michael has so many of the aspirational qualities that a great man should have: a sharp intellect, a great sense of humor, a beautiful family, the ability to make people feel at ease in eleven languages, fluency with a musical instrument, the right amount of gravitas to command the high seas but still look cool on a bicycle, sharp collars without the use of stays, and a broad and deep enough sports knowledge to “just have a beer” with anyone.

He is one of those rare people you meet who is really interested in your story about your garden, your trip, or how you were trying to get in the building to meet your wife that time. No matter who he’s with – lawyers, blues musicians, Igbo people, or the Faz wait staff, every group of people feels like he is “one of them”. He’s someone who can both listen and talk the right amount of time, so that you feel heard but feel like you learned a lot.

And above all, he’s a genuinely nice guy.

I look forward to getting to know you and your family better, and to our friendship growing after the boat returns. But for now, here’s to exciting travels!

Ferial Ara Saeed | Visiting Research Fellow, Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University

Best wishes to a class act — Michael’s intelligent approach and sophistication will be sorely missed.

Jaleh Samway Bast

Miguel, you model hard work, motivation, commitment, and dedication.  You embody loyalty, kindness, brilliance, compassion, and integrity.  You were fortunate to have experienced yahoo! and yahoo! was fortunate to have experienced you.  Enjoy safe travels as you live this next adventure in your life, mom and dad taught you well. I love you. Me.

Eugene Y. Lao | Regional General Counsel, Asia Pacific, Yahoo! Inc.

Michael is an exceptionally talented lawyer, inspirational leader and principled human being, but above all, a dear friend. Replacing this uncommon combination of attributes is nearly impossible. Unless I get a smart dog.

The Miskas

Michael is the type of an individual that most of us strive to become – he is smart, kind, thoughtful, considerate, disciplined and determined to accomplish his goals.  However, his strongest trait is that he is a true “blues man/sailor” who understands and listens to not only his head and heart, but also to his soul.  Sail on!

Pierre Landy | Regional General Counsel, EMEA, Yahoo! Inc.

Thanks Michael for being such a great mentor and friend, not necessarily in that order!

One of my favorite things about you is your ability to delegate and completely let go, as evidenced by the note from you below:

“Pierre, this is entirely your call as to how you organize this conference – You are after all in charge of Europe. I just would like to suggest that you organize it in Paris, for two days, from Tuesday to Thursday, at a Hotel that costs no more than a 150 euros per night, with workshops every morning, a maximum of one team activity during the conference which should look like it’s a serious thing such as visiting Versailles, and then one guest speaker – for the rest, you’re totally free to organize as you see fit, so long as you check with me first”.

Bon vent!

Danny O’Brien | Internet Advocacy Coordinator, Committee to Protect Journalists

I think it was Buckminister Fuller who theorized that the craziest of visionaries are always prompted to follow the setting sun, and that’s why so many of them had piled up against the Californian coast, ambitious and optimistic but still not quite brave enough to throw themselves into the sea and sail off into the ever-receding future. I am delighted, and unsurprised, that Michael has escaped the iron grip of the land. Fair winds and following seas!

Amaka Okobi

It was a pleasure meeting Michael. He is everything  you said. I wish him and his family all that God has for them. I am glad I had the blessing of meeting him before he left.

Jeff Krilla | Principal, Public Law & Policy Strategies, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP (former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State)

In my four years at the State Department when any internet-related issue would make it to the seventh floor, every senior State Department official would ask “What does Samway think?”   Now, every time I watch the movies “The Perfect Storm” or “Waterworld” I will ask the same question.

Many thanks, Michael, for your leadership, innovative thinking and compassion on the issue of Internet freedom.

I look forward to following the exploits of Team Samway on their seafaring blog as closely as I followed the BHRP blog!

Anchors aweigh!

Nicholas Crouch | APAC Senior Manager for Corporate Security & Safety, Yahoo! Inc.

I remember Michael and Jerry Yang shopping in an Egyptian antiques shop on the Middle East trip. As security we would always keep within earshot of the guys we were looking after. Jerry ended up buying some large piece of Egyptian art and haggled very successfully with the Egyptian shop owner who agreed on a pretty fine price. After Jerry had paid for his newfound treasure, the shop owner turned to him and said, “But how can you possibly fit this in your hand luggage?” Michael, being the astute humourist, quipped, “Don’t worry, he has his own plane”. A nanosecond later he realized that perhaps this choice of words was not the best as he was next in line to pay for his newly found Egyptian treasure. Needless to say Michael’s haggling was not as successful as Jerry’s. . .

Mark Bench | World Press Freedom Committee

While I’ve only known Michael through the Global Network Initiative for the last 3-4 years, it’s been sufficient to gain a great respect for his diligence, perseverance, and travel lust!  Because he lived with his family abroad–Chile for 2 1/2 years–and elsewhere, he’s gained a respect for other cultures and peoples.  His spoken Spanish is outstanding, so that if he’s ever caught in the wilds of the Latin American rain forests, I feel certain that he’ll be able to negotiate himself out with panache.  He’s as comfortable in the offices of some of the most prestigious law firms in the United States as he is encouraging a first year student at Georgetown.  We wish him, his wife, their son and daughter the very best on their seemingly quixotic sailing journey.  Perhaps their greatest task will be home [err--boat] schooling their children.  They will be citizens of the world, those lucky kids!  Keep reading good books and sharing titles with us.  We’ll miss you on the GNI, but will never forget your pioneering spirit and remarkable leadership in shepherding the organization through the shoals of getting us set up as a legal entity.  Bon voyage, good friend.

Arvind Ganesan | Director, Business and Human Rights, Human Rights Watch

The first time I met him, Michael told me about how he had done human rights work in Chile about a decade earlier and worked with this other person who was also very interested in human rights.  He asked me if I had ever heard of her, and said that it was funny he asked.  She works down the hall from me and has worked for me over the last five years.  When he finally came to DC, he got a chance to meet her after years.

Jennifer Samway

Hats off (or should I say on) to Michael for his amazing tenure at Yahoo! over the last decade.  His work has been both challenging and rewarding in many ways too numerous to recount in this short note of appreciation.  His dedication and commitment in upholding the highest standards for both himself and his team have been realized.  The trust and respect he has earned from his many co-workers has been demonstrated through all of the kind words, emails, farewell speeches, and thoughtful gifts that have been sent during his last few weeks at Yahoo!.

It has been a wonderful time for our family to be a part of the Yahoo! experience over the years.

We will miss the friendships that have been gained, but hope that you will all follow along with us in our new adventure out in the open water.  It is time for Michael to put all of those wonderful leadership skills he has developed to good use as captain of his own ship and destiny.

Thanks to Michael and Yahoo! for starting this adventure, now it’s time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. . .

Michael Samway, Sr.

Here is one of my favorite pictures of Mike.  Now that his corporate image is no longer a consideration, and as a dad proud of both his person and achievements — I’d like to share this with his colleagues.

Homa Samway

Michael always was determined to be a perfectionist and complete whatever he was doing/involved in and to do it right. He is also very kind, giving, and dedicated. I am a very proud mum and blessed.

Christine Bader and Sarah Labowitz | Vasanth Rakasi

Guest Post, by Christine Bader, Advisor to the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on business and human rights

(See here for video highlights of the Summit, here for photos of the Summit, and here for the 2010 Flickr Gallery!)

As I pored over my notes on the flight home from Tuesday’s second annual Yahoo! Business & Human Rights summit, three themes emerged — context, scale, and education — as did a few reflections about this moment in the tech industry’s history.

Many speakers at the summit urged us to consider technology’s intersection with free expression and privacy in its broader context.  Kum Hong Siew, former member of Singapore’s parliament, stressed the importance of understanding the offline regulatory situation in a country before honing in on the government’s approach to the internet and social media.  Kathleen Reen from Internews reminded us that we’re not discussing mere technical issues, but challenges that are situated within human rights and the rule of law.

Context is critical at both macro and micro levels.  Scott Rubin from Google discussed the difficulty in deciding whether to take down YouTube content, which requires assessing the intention of the uploader.  For example, violent footage could be taken down in accordance with a site’s Terms of Service, but might be critical if revealing excessive force by police.

Scale was considered from a number of perspectives:  global vs local, mass market vs niche, small vs big.  Companies grapple with how to reconcile global policies with local laws and norms; national governments struggle to manage companies’ international reach and content.

Elia Varela Serra believes that demand will grow for niche products like Maneno, the blogging platform she co-founded for sub-Saharan Africa, which enables local language content and easy uploading for areas with poor connectivity.  On the other hand, Sameer Padania of Witness.org tried to build a video sharing hub for human rights activists but found that many of them used YouTube, so switched his focus to ensuring appropriate space for human rights-related content in mass market tools.

The Global Network Initiative (GNI) has forged personal relationships that have proved invaluable when crises occur.  But the GNI won’t always be comprised of the same founding individuals, and aims to grow in terms of membership and the number of people its members touch.  Companies currently take a case-by-case approach to the human rights challenges they face — but that can’t be sustainable for a business like YouTube, to which users upload 24 hours of video every minute.

All of the panels emphasized the importance of education:  about human rights, about the risks of online life and activism, and about the tools that can protect them like UltraReach and AnchorFree.  Kim Pham of AccessNow, Reen of InterNews and Sarah Labowitz of the U.S. State Department were among those who discussed their initiatives to educate constituencies, from activists to journalists to foreign service officers respectively.

I’ve observed and advised GNI since its inception, so have seen firsthand the tech industry’s coming to terms with its impacts on human rights.

The industry is exceptionally dynamic in terms of its products and services, the ways in which its offerings are employed by a wildly diverse population, and its relationships with other companies, governments, and civil society.

But its experience with regard to human rights is not unique.  Many other sectors, most notably extractives and apparel, have gone through a similar process of

1. realizing their impacts on human rights, positive and negative;
2. taking responsibility for those impacts;
3. recognizing that they’ll be more effective collaborating with peers and stakeholders than going it alone;
4. piloting solutions and discussing how to scale them up; and
5. understanding that respecting human rights is a necessary and permanent requirement, but one that will take countless twists and turns — so prioritizing relationships and principles rather than specific prescriptions.

By this time next year, the industry will no doubt be grappling with new technologies employed in new ways by new users, new regulatory and social expectations, new players and different incarnations of old ones.  The Global Network Initiative and Tuesday’s event are terrific examples of that fifth stage above, that I hope and expect will support ongoing collaboration and effective solutions.  Watch this space.

Christine Bader is Advisor to the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Representative on business and human rights.

Panels include a discussion about Governments, Technology and Human Rights, in which panelists including Sarah Labowitz of the U.S. State Department and Christine Bader, Advisor to the UN Special Representative for Business & Human Rights, and Kum Hong Siew, former member of parliament, Singapore will discuss various approaches to addressing free expression and privacy rights in the Internet, Technology and Communications (ICT) sector.

Another panel, entitled Technological Solutions to Free Expression and Privacy Issues, will address innovative solutions targeted at evading government restrictions on free expression and privacy.   Panelists include Evgeny Morozov, Yahoo!’s 2010 Georgetown Fellow and contributing editor to Foreign Policy; Andrew Lewman of the Tor Project; Kathleen Reen of Internews and Alan Huang of UltraFree Internet.

We will also feature a panel about the intersection between social media and social change, in which journalists, bloggers, social entrepreneurs and film-makers will hold a discussion about the role of media and technology as a platform for free expression and social change, and shared innovative methods of amplifying voices from around the world.  Panelists include Abbas Gassem, Founder and Editor, Inside Somalia;  Sameer Padania, Hub Manager, Witness.org; Nadia Trinidad, Yahoo! Stanford Fellow and senior correspondent, ABS-CBN Broadcasting Company, Manila, Philippines, Elia Serra, co-founder and director of Maneno, and Omid Memarian, UC Berkeley Rotary Peace Fellow and Iranian journalist and blogger.

Finally, we will also have a fascinating discussion about Unconventional Threats to Online Privacy and Free Expression, during which we will learn about how issues like account deactivation and terms of service violations can have unintended chilling effects on privacy and free expression. Panelists for that discussion include Dr. Mehdi Yahyanejad, founder and editor of Balatarin.com, Kim Pham of AccessNow, and Danny O’Brien of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

For more information about the Summit, please see here. For those of you can’t make it to Sunnyvale to join us, we will be posting video shortly after the event, so please stay tuned!

Mark your calendar, and check it out on Monday!

Hosted by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the event was led by Professor John Ruggie, the UN Special Representative for human rights and trans-national corporations, who held a lively ‘town hall’ meeting in the morning, giving participants an opportunity to engage in direct dialogue on the practical implementation of his policy framework: Protect, Respect, Remedy.  Later in the day, the Special Representative praised the Global Network Initiative, which Yahoo! co-founded, and called for European ICT companies to sign up as members.

Yahoo!’s BHRP participated alongside Microsoft and Google in a panel session in the afternoon on the topic of “which approaches can be taken when national legislation is incompatible with internationally recognised human rights”.  After keynotes from the highly respected speakers Lene Wendland, Officer of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Colin Maclay of the Berkman Center and Sharon Hom of Human Rights in China, the companies shared their experiences and approach to addressing the challenges of incompatibility between national laws and human rights.

I outlined how Yahoo!’s BHRP is integrating human rights issues into the way we make business decisions across our organisation and gave some examples of how that integration has already paid dividends for the promotion of free expression and privacy, e.g. our human rights impact assessment in Vietnam, which resulted in our decision to manage and operate Yahoo!’s Vietnamese language services out of Singapore so the services would be governed by laws with stronger protections than in Vietnam today.

I also contended that it would be a mistake to focus only on countries with a poor record on human rights, as is illustrated by a recent Belgian court judgment against Yahoo!, and that such cases show the importance of implementing practices, such as those recommended by the GNI, consistently, throughout an organization, not just vis-à-vis certain countries.

The panel took questions ranging from Google’s recent China announcement, to the practical difficulties of respecting local content standards in the context of global products such as YouTube and Flickr, to the question of corporate accountability, which panel member Alexis Krajeski of F&C Management Ltd. explained was an important focus area for the GNI.

It was a privilege to contribute to the debate and to have the opportunity to learn and share ideas.  Yahoo!’s BHRP looks forward to continued efforts on these topics and to a positive outcome of the Special Representative’s mandate.

To share your views, please comment below, or join the debate on the Special Representative’s forum, at http://www.srsgconsultation.org.

by Jen Swallow| Legal Director EMEA | Product Compliance

I’m thrilled to introduce Evgeny Morozov, our 2009-2010 Yahoo! Fellow at Georgetown University.

Evgeny is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy and runs the magazine’s influential and widely-quoted “Net Effect” blog about the Internet’s impact on global politics.  Prior to his Yahoo! Fellowship, he was a fellow at George Soros’s Open Society Institute, where he remains on the board of the Information Program (one of the leading and most experimental funders for technology projects that have an impact on open society and human rights). Before moving to the US, Evgeny was based in Berlin and Prague, where he was Director of New Media at Transitions Online, a media development NGO active in 29 countries of the former Soviet bloc. Evgeny’s work has appeared in The Economist, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, Slate, Le Monde, The San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Review, Foreign Policy, Project Syndicate, Dissent and many other publications. He has appeared on CNN, CBS, SkyNews, CBC, Al Jazeera International, France 24, Reuters TV, NPR, BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service.

Here is what Evgeny is working on, in his own words:

“The rapid spread of new communications technologies around the globe promised a new age of politics, where citizens would be able to educate themselves about important political issues of the day, form ad-hoc groups about the most important such issues, and use new media to strategically challenge the power of their governments. This was a very appealing narrative, because it also matched the rapid spread of freedom and democracy across the world, particularly in the 1990s.

Looking at some of these early predictions – about the end of nationalism or the demise of the nation state or the global triumph of Web-powered freedom – one easily detects the naiveté that underlined much of our thinking on these issues. As it turns out, conventional (and often brutal) politics still matters, even in the age of easy mobilization dominated by blogs and social networking.

In my own research – including my one year at Georgetown on a Yahoo fellowship – I’m focusing on how governments – especially those that are not particularly famous for their respect for democracy and human rights – have been adapting to the digital threat posed by this new era and minimizing the democratizing effects of these new technologies. Comparing the approaches in China, Russia, much of the Middle East, I came to see that the governments – and groups and networks affiliated with/ and supportive of what they do – have made a remarkable use of the very same technologies that have become favorite tools of the activists and NGOs. Similarly, many of the new public spheres that formed in digital spaces have also been receptive to numerous nationalist and extremist ideas that were not very conducive to deliberative democracy. How do we still promote activities of the “virtual civil societies” without empowering its enemies, who are sometimes even more dangerous than the authoritarian governments themselves? Were we too quick to assume that promoting democracy and freedom – as well as engaging in public diplomacy – would necessarily become easier and quicker in this new digital age?

These are some of the questions that I’m asking in my research and various events at Georgetown and that I’ll be discussing in my upcoming book about the Internet and democracy (to be published by PublicAffairs in late 2010).”

We are looking forward to bringing Evgeny to Yahoo!’s campus early next year to talk about his work. Congratulations, Evgeny!

Victor Ricco | CEDHA

In October, Yahoo!’s BHRP had the honor of participating in the United Nation’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ consultation on business and human rights in Geneva.  The consultation was presented by Special Representative of the Secretary-General on human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises,  John Ruggie, and chaired by the Ambassadors of Norway and Nigeria. More than 300 representatives from UN member states, human rights organizations, civil society, academia and business attended.

The Special Representative has the monumental task of defining the responsibilities companies should have in protecting human rights around the world. He began by creating a policy framework based on three principles:

1. The State duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business;
2. The corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and
3. The need for greater access by victims to effective remedies.

The Special Representative will complete his mandate by translating the policy framework into specific actions that companies and nations should take to protect human rights, and the consultation was an opportunity for people and organizations to give their ideas and views about what the final product should include.

To learn more about the policy framework, go to:  http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/trans_corporations/index.htm

I had the privilege of representing Yahoo! on a panel about the second principle, the corporate responsibility to respect human rights. I was asked to discuss the dilemmas companies like Yahoo! face when certain aspects of local laws, or their implementation, may conflict with international human rights norms, and to give recommendations on what the Special Representative should consider when developing specific guidelines for companies.

I talked about the power of technology and how access to the Internet is often even more important in countries that restrict free expression. I talked about the difficult choices companies face and how requiring information and technology companies to refrain from offering products and services in countries that restrict free expression can actually punish the citizens in those countries who rely on technology to communicate and connect with the outside world. I also asked the Special Representative to consider how the framework can show support for solutions like the GNI that draw upon the combined wisdom of companies, non-profits, academics, users and others.

To read the full text of my remarks, see here.

I learned a great deal from my co-panelists, including human rights giants like Jody Kollapen (former Chair of the South Africa Human Rights Commission, who represented Stephen Biko and who helped create the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission), Auret van Heerden (President and CEO of the Fair Labor Association and former exile from the apartheid-era South African government) and Salvador Quishpe, who represented the indigenous Saraguro community of Ecuador. I’m honored to have represented Yahoo!, and the BHRP looks forward to learning more about the progress of the Special Representative’s mandate, and to future conversations with these and other stakeholders.

Yahoo! is committed to protecting the free expression and privacy rights of our users, so we are concerned by the misleading and incorrect statements in an article posted on ZDNet.com regarding Yahoo! and Iran.

The allegations in the story are false. Neither Yahoo! nor any Yahoo! representative has met with or communicated with Iranian officials regarding the matters referenced in the article, and Yahoo! has not disclosed user data to the Iranian government. The ZDnet article makes other inaccurate assertions. We don’t have a Yahoo! Iran website, as the article suggests. We don’t have employees in Iran either. And while we have a website targeted at users in Malaysia, we don’t have operations or officials there, also wrongly asserted in the article.

The power of the Internet means that information travels quickly, including claims that are false. We’re disappointed in this case that we weren’t given a chance to comment on the allegations before the story went live. We are, however, pleased that ZDnet’s editor has now said the report on which the article was based is considered unreliable. We intend to continue to demonstrate, through our actions, our deep commitment to protecting our users’ rights to free expression and privacy. Yahoo! was founded on the principle that access to information and to communications tools can improve people’s lives, and Yahoo! is committed to protecting and promoting freedom of expression and privacy around the globe, including in Iran.

To learn more about our human rights efforts, please visit our website, at http://humanrights.yahoo.com.

by Michael Samway, VP & Deputy General Counsel

James Emery | Flickr Creative Commons

Hello, and welcome to the Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Program blog! For the past few years, Yahoo! has been focused upon how to address the fact that our business increasingly intersects with human rights issues around the world, specifically user privacy and free expression on the Internet. We know that we have a responsibility, like all companies, to act responsibly in the communities in which we operate, and we have taken action, including funding academic fellowships, creating the Yahoo! Human Rights Fund, engaging with governments, and helping to co-found the Global Network Initiative.

You can read more about our initiatives on our website, at humanrights.yahoo.com.

At Yahoo!, we believe that access to information improves lives and advances human rights around the world. We also know that with almost half a billion users around the word, we have an opportunity to raise awareness about free expression and user privacy.  The issues at the intersection of technology and human rights are complex, and we believe that we can only benefit from transparency and an open exchange of ideas with engaged and informed people around the world.

With this blog, we are hoping to start a conversation. Will you join us?

by Ebele Okobi-Harris |  Director, Business & Human Rights Program