More and more, human rights are exercised — and violated — online. Billions of people enjoy freedom of expression, access to information and the right to education in the digital space. But they can also experience hate speech, bullying and harassment and have their privacy violated... At Facebook, we’re committed to respecting human rights in our business operations, product development, policies and programming. To further that commitment, today we’re launching a corporate human rights policy, covering all of Facebook Inc, and a fund to support human rights defenders.

This new policy sets out the human rights standards we will strive to respect as defined in international law including the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs)... We will report our most critical human rights issues, like risks to freedom of expression, to our Board of Directors. And we will release a public report annually on how we’re addressing human rights concerns stemming from our products, policies or business practices... This yearly report will build on our existing practice of disclosing human rights impact assessments and detailed responses to recommendations.

We’ve worked over the years to support human rights defenders who use our platform. Now we’re creating a fund that will give offline assistance to human rights defenders facing critical threats and support new digital security efforts... We’ll also build on our existing work to protect defenders’ accounts...

We’re launching this policy to build on our commitments as part of the Global Network Initiative, and our recent human rights work...