United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: presents a report on human rights and artificial intelligence

The Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Human Rights and New and Emerging Digital Technologies, published on 18 June 2026, presents a comprehensive analytical study clarifying States' obligations under international human rights law throughout the full lifecycle of artificial intelligence systems. Building on previous OHCHR mapping work and the broader UN human rights system's extensive engagement with digital technologies, the report centers human rights due diligence as the foundational concept for shaping a rights-advancing digital environment, emphasizing that the obligations of States to respect, protect, and fulfil human rights in AI contexts have received comparatively limited attention and urgently require clarification. 

The report recognizes that AI systems pose distinct and serious human rights challenges: they enable large-scale data collection and processing that generates group-based, systemic, and cumulative harms, like embedding and amplifying structural discrimination, reshaping information environments, enabling mass surveillance with chilling effects on collective rights, intensifying workplace monitoring, and normalizing automated decision-making in public administration, law enforcement, and military domains in ways that amplify bias and make errors progressively harder to detect and correct. 

These interconnected risks require States to adapt due diligence into a systemic, continuous, and technically informed framework capable of capturing indirect and cumulative impacts from multiple AI agents. Accordingly, OHCHR recommends that: 

• States systematically and continuously undertake human rights impact assessments across the entire AI lifecycle through inclusive consultative processes; 
• ensure due diligence processes can identify systemic, group-based, and cumulative harms, especially for historically marginalized communities; 
• apply the precautionary principle by refraining from or prohibiting deployment in high-risk contexts, such as law enforcement, border management, welfare administration, and military applications, where risks cannot be effectively mitigated; 
• close governance gaps in public procurement and public-private partnerships by requiring independent human rights impact assessments, transparency, ongoing monitoring, and contractual accountability safeguards; 
• guarantee transparency and meaningful public participation in AI governance; 
• equip oversight bodies with the mandate and resources to monitor violations, ensure the right to contest AI-assisted decisions, and remove legal barriers such as excessive trade-secret claims that impede access to justice; 
• invest in institutional and technical capacities for independent, multidisciplinary risk assessments involving affected stakeholders; 
• strengthen international cooperation to address cross-border risks and prevent regulatory gaps; 
• apply a smart mix of regulatory measures and policy incentives in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights to hold corporations accountable; 
• and engage with OHCHR's advisory services on human rights in the digital space to develop effective laws and policies.