"Guest post: why investors should care about business and human rights in the digita age," 4 June 2018

In the digital age, from a business and human rights approach, companies should care about privacy. A company should pay attention whether in its operations, privacy is systematically infringed. By that, systematic privacy neglect can have repercussions on other human rights, such as the right to health... Data has become the new currency of the global market.. [I]t will affect how investors are holding companies in their portfolio to account for human rights abuses in the digital sphere and how infringements will lead to legal cases or also to divestments... [S]tudies show that employee trust in their company decreases when they feel under surveillance and that the employees’ productivity sinks as a result... The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, adopted in June 2011 by the UN Human Rights Council, remain relevant also in the digital age. They serve as an important analytical framework to balance out responsibilities of companies towards protecting and respecting human rights in a digital business world.