This morning, ZDNet.com ran a story that made misleading and incorrect statements about Yahoo! and Iran. It alleged — quoting information from a single source — that Yahoo! representatives met with Iranian authorities last week after Yahoo! was blocked in Iran and agreed to disclose data on hundreds of thousands of users.

The claims 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. ZDNet has since called the report unreliable, but we’re disappointed we weren’t given a chance to weigh in before the story was published.

You can read more about the situation on our Business & Human Rights Program blog.

UPDATE: ZDNet retracted its story this evening.

Nicki Dugan
Blog Editor

Abebe Gellaw, the 2008-09 Yahoo! International Fellow at Stanford this year, is an example of how one person with a great idea can make a difference.

Abebe is an Ethiopian journalist, but the regime in his home country is too repressive to allow true journalism, so he is in exile. He had been in London for years before coming to the U.S. as the Yahoo! International Journalism Fellow at Stanford.

The Yahoo! fellowship was specifically established for people like Abebe, journalists from countries where there are strong challenges to a free press. Yahoo! and the Knight Fellowships agreed that supporting journalists who were directly or indirectly under attack should be at the top of the to-do list, and so we created the Yahoo! Fellowship in 2006, with a generous gift from Yahoo!.

Abebe is the third Yahoo! Fellow, following Imtiaz Ali, from Pakistan, and Violet Gonda, of Zimbabwe. Like Abebe, Violet was in exile, too. Abebe’s great idea is Addis Voice, a London-based website devoted to independent news about Ethiopia. It has become a trusted source of news and commentary for the Ethiopian diaspora. Here’s an interview with Abebe:

Abebe’s fellowship is ending, and we are ready to welcome Nadia Trinidad of the Philippines, one of the deadliest countries for journalists in the world. Nadia is a senior correspondent for ABS-CBN Brooadcasting Company in Manila. She will study the psychological and sociological aspects of corruption in the media. She will arrive in August.

Journalists are under attack around the world, and organizations like the Committee To Protect Journalists make sure that those attacks are brought to light. It makes me feel proud that the Knight Fellowships and Yahoo! have teamed up to provide a fellowship at Stanford every year for someone who is bearing the brunt of those attacks.

Jim Bettinger
Director, John S. Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalists
Stanford University

Filmed and edited by Bart Bishoff, Yahoo! Broadcast Bureau

I’d like to ask a personal question. So lean in. Closer. How hard is your underwear working?

While you’re thinking that over, I would love to introduce you to Gaurav Mishra, the Yahoo! Human Rights Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology and Global Internet at Georgetown University.

As the Yahoo! Human Rights Fellow, Gaurav leads research on social media and mobile use in India and China and teaches a graduate course on “Social Media in Business, Development and Government.” Gaurav is on sabbatical from India’s Tata Motors, where he is Assistant General Manager with a focus on digital marketing. He also writes Gauravonomics, a popular blog on how social media and mobile technologies are changing media, business, development and government, particularly in emerging economies.

Gaurav recently came to campus to speak about his research. Some highlights:

• Even where Internet content is controlled, creative people find ways to communicate. In China, Internet users resort to images and code words to elude censorship. For example, “harmonized” was a euphemism for “my blog got censored.” When the term was banned, intrepid writers wrote about “river crab,” which sounds similar to harmonious in Mandarin. Later the meme became photos of a naked man doing pushups.
• The Internet can be a powerful tool to support free expression and social change. In India, four young women used the Internet to launch the “Pink Chaddi Campaign,” a peaceful protest against violent conservatives’ plans to disrupt Valentine’s Day by assaulting “pub-going, loose and forward” women. The campaign called for women to shame the would-be perpetrators by sending pink panties to their homes and offices. The overwhelming response resulted in more than 270 blog links; a Facebook group with more than 48,000 members, 350 discussion topics and more than 6,750 wall posts; and hundreds of pink panties sent. The campaign brought worldwide attention to the issue, mobilized thousands of young women, and the group threatening the violent action was preventively detained on Valentine’s Day.

Gaurav’s talk was particularly timely, as Yahoo! continues to explore how we promote free expression for our users around the world. Yahoo!’s Business & Human Rights Program will be hosting a Business & Human Rights Summit in Sunnyvale on May 5 (space is limited; RSVP required). The Summit will focus on how technology and the Internet facilitate freedom of expression, with a focus upon innovative approaches to addressing government challenges. Our keynote speaker is Ory Okolloh, the Exective Director of Ushahidi, the crowdsourcing platform for crisis situations developed in Kenya and used in the Congo, Gaza and the 2009 elections in India. We’ll have panels about citizen and cyber journalism (featuring journalists/bloggers from around the world) and about the Global Network Initiative, a global effort co-founded by Yahoo! to address threats to privacy and free expression in the Internet, communications and technology sector.

So… now that you know that even a pair of underwear can be a powerful tool for social change, what’s your big idea?

Here’s my interview with Gaurav from his recent visit:

Ebele Okobi-Harris
Director, Yahoo! Business & Human Rights

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Fast-paced, colorful, increasingly modern. A youthful and exuberant population roars through the city on motor-scooters and spends much of its waking hours surfing the Web. Internet cafes are everywhere. That’s what our team discovered when we visited Vietnam in 2007. We wanted to see the Internet explosion and the vibrancy of this economy first-hand before meeting with U.S. diplomats and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to discuss the state of affairs in Vietnam around the issues of free expression and privacy.

The Internet – and Yahoo! – has a growing presence in Vietnam. By next year, thirty-five percent of the population is expected to get online – staggering when you consider Vietnam didn’t substantially embrace the Web until 2005. We entered the market a year later with a Vietnamese-language version of our homepage (vn.yahoo.com), followed by Mail, Messenger, Search, and News. We now run one of the country’s leading blogging services. And since few people own computers, we’re working with the Internet café industry through our iCafe program to improve the Internet experience for all involved.

Unfortunately, like other regions where communications are controlled, Vietnam is exploring ways to place restrictions on the Internet. The government recently issued regulations on Internet blogging that aim to limit certain online content, particularly posts considered more political in nature. Not surprisingly, these rules have been roundly criticized as an attempt to stifle internationally recognized speech. As a company committed to user safety and trust, we’ll continue to review these and any new rules to determine what effect, if any at all, they would have on our own policies.

We’ve learned tough lessons as pioneers in the emerging markets, and we’re now applying them to how we build businesses in new markets. In the case of Vietnam, we took deliberate steps when launching services there to protect our users. Our business, policy and legal advisors visited the country to assess the landscape as part of our human rights impact assessment – a process we committed to when we created Yahoo!’s Business & Human Rights Program last year. It helped us tailor our business to be consistent with our corporate human rights commitments. For example, we decided 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. We’re also providing further protections for our users and employees through legal structures, internal policies, user terms of service, and tailored approaches on data access and location.

We believe deeply in engagement in markets like Vietnam. It’s good business. It’s also empowering for local citizens, as they communicate, exchange ideas, and learn about the outside world in unprecedented ways. The online community is thriving in Vietnam, and we’re in a leadership position in that important and growing market. We’re proud of the business Yahoo! has built there and while we know we’ll face evolving challenges, we’re also confident in the approach we’re pursuing to protect the online rights of our users.

Doing business globally is challenging in any industry. Given the speed, scale, and dynamism of the Internet, our industry has some unique challenges. Some of those same issues in the emerging markets are also opportunities to spread enormously empowering information and communications tools and platforms to citizens hungry for access and openness. We’re a company founded on the principles of openness and user trust, and we’re not alone in our commitment to protecting and promoting these rights. We’re confident our partnership with companies, human rights groups, academics, and investors in the Global Network Initiative offers a powerful platform for collective action to promote freedom of expression and privacy online around the world, including in promising places like Vietnam.

You can read more about our global human rights initiatives here.

Michael Samway
VP & Deputy General Counsel

Photo from janello

Two years ago, we joined a number of stakeholders with the goal of setting standards for doing business in markets that present human rights challenges. Yesterday, we unveiled the results of our collective effort — a human rights code of conduct known as the Global Network Initiative. We’re confident this initiative creates a platform for positive change.

These principles provide a valuable roadmap for companies like Yahoo! operating in markets where freedom of expression and privacy are unfairly restricted. The code also requires that participating companies make a number of commitments (with independent accountability), including among others:

• Conducting human rights impact assessments to identify circumstances where freedom of expression and privacy may be jeopardized an advanced.
• Training employees on procedures to protect freedom of expression and privacy when faced with unfair government demands and restrictions.
• Being transparent with users when required by governments to remove content or limit access to information and ideas as well as circumstances where disclosure of personal information may be required.
• Considering challenging governments in court or other forums when faced with restrictions that appear inconsistent with domestic and international laws and standards.
• Engaging in individual and collective policy advocacy for change in places where laws or practices don’t adequately protect citizens’ rights to freedom of expression and privacy.

Does this mean repressive regimes will stop censoring content or demanding information on their own citizens? No. But, we think this initiative will eventually make it more difficult for them to do so, with companies and human rights advocates united against unreasonable and unlawful demands.

Despite the two years of arduous work among companies, human rights groups, academics, investors, and policy advocates, launching the Global Network Initiative is in many ways just the start. We expect the initiative to evolve, and we hope these standards will take root and grow into global guidelines for even more companies worldwide. All the participants in the initiative are acutely aware of today’s online challenges and we believe we’ve created a framework for addressing the trends we see for tomorrow.

The Internet is transformative. We’ve seen it empower individuals, modernize economies, improve healthcare, strengthen education and raise awareness of local, national, and international events. Today, at the start of this next phase of our collective journey in the field of business and human rights, we strive to ensure technology remains a force for good for citizens around the world. You can read more about all of our human rights efforts here.

Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo

It was just a few months ago we testified on the subject of Internet Freedom before a U.S. Senate subcommittee. At the hearing, one important question asked by Senators from both sides of the aisle involved the status of a collective human rights code of conduct for our industry. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), who chaired the hearing, closed the session by strongly encouraging the companies and human rights groups to reach agreement in short order. He actually said he hoped it could done in 48 hours! While we didn’t make the two-day deadline, not long after the hearing we achieved a significant collective milestone and reached agreement in principle on the core components of the code of conduct.

A few weeks ago, we received a letter from Senators Durbin and Tom Coburn (R – Okla.), asking for a further update on where Yahoo! and others were in developing the code of conduct. They urged companies not to wait until the code was finalized before taking action to safeguard user privacy and freedom of expression, something we’ve been deeply committed to at Yahoo!. As we said at the hearing, we’re ready now and we’ve been working to match our actions with our words.

You can read our response to the senators here, but let me recap a few key points:

• After 18 months of intensive effort to develop a global code, we’ve reached a major step with industry counterparts, human rights advocates, academics, investors, and others. We’ve all agreed to the core components of the code, which consist of principles of freedom of expression and privacy, implementation guidelines, and a governance, accountability and learning framework. Now it’s a matter of each participant reviewing the agreement for final approval. Again, we’re ready at Yahoo! to make this initiative a reality.
• We are optimistic we will collectively launch the initiative this Fall.
• Yahoo! hasn’t been waiting for a final code to take multiple actions on the human rights front. In addition to appealing to the State Department for their support in diplomatic efforts, we have:
  1. Established a human rights fund to assist political dissidents and their families;
  2. Implemented a human rights assessment as we explore doing business challenging markets and established a dedicated business and human rights program within the company; and
  3. Founded academic fellowships at Stanford and Georgetown to advance free expression and global values.

A year and a half may seem like a long time for those tapping their feet in anticipation of an industry code of conduct. We understand. We also believe it’s important to recognize the complexity of this dynamic process. We didn’t want to draft a pledge we’d all simply sign and move on. We needed to craft something meaningful that left everyone independently accountable to their pledge to do the right thing around free expression and privacy. We also faced the natural challenges drafting principles and guidelines for businesses where the industry and technology landscape regularly and often dramatically changes and evolves. We also agreed — companies and human rights groups alike — that we needed to include room for new participants, technologies, and challenges.

We’ve all also worked carefully in crafting the principles, implementation guidelines, and accountability and learning framework to be sure this isn’t a code pointing at or strictly about China. This is much broader, as it should be. We are in agreement across companies and human rights organizations that this initiative will be global in scope. We’re also hopeful inside and outside Yahoo! that this collective human rights code of conduct will be a model initiative showing the strength of collaboration in the field of business and human rights.

Michael Samway
VP & Deputy General Counsel

I respect lots of journalists. But I’m in awe of Violet Gonda, who was the 2007-08 Yahoo! International Fellow at Stanford last year. Why? Because she defies an oppressive regime in Zimbabwe that wants to shut her up. She walks the walk of speaking truth to power.

The Yahoo! International Journalism Fellowship at Stanford was established for people like Violet, journalists from countries where there are strong challenges to a free press. Yahoo! and the Knight Fellowships agreed that we needed to support journalists who were directly or indirectly under attack, and so we created the fellowship in 2006, with a generous gift from Yahoo!. (The Knight Fellowships itself has been around since 1966. A young Jerry Yang first met with the Knight Fellows in the spring of 1995.)

The first Yahoo! Fellow was Imtiaz Ali, from Pakistan, where journalism is a deadly occupation. But there could hardly be country that fits our definition better than Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe’s regime has systematically and brutally cracked down on anyone who disagreed with it — opposition politicians, the press, human rights activists and others. Violet Gonda has been banned from the country (actually, the justice minister said the country would welcome her back — but only in prison) so she works in exile, at a small radio station, SW Radio Africa, in London. This station broadcasts uncensored news about Zimbabwe back into the country by any means possible, including text messaging. (Want to get a taste of her work? Listen to these two interviews, one with a Mugabe spokesman and the other with Desmond Tutu.) We were proud to have her for the year at Stanford, where she studied the development of news media in emerging democracies. Now she is back in London. If there’s a God in heaven, someday she will someday be able to return to her homeland.

And as she leaves, we are ready to welcome Abebe Gellaw, of Ethiopia, who will be the 2008-09 Yahoo! International Fellow. Like Violet, Abebe is in exile. He left after the Ethiopian government started rounding up and arresting journalists in November 2005. He is editor-in chief of Addis Voice, a London-based website devoted independent news about Ethiopia. He will arrive in August for his year.

Journalists are under attack around the world, and organizations like the Committee To Protect Journalists make sure that those attacks are brought to light. It makes me feel proud that the Knight Fellowships and Yahoo! have teamed up to provide a fellowship at Stanford every year for someone who is bearing the brunt of those attacks.

Jim Bettinger
Director, John S. Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalists
Stanford University

Last Tuesday, I testified at a hearing on Internet Freedom before a U.S. Senate subcommittee chaired by Senator Richard Durbin (webcast is here). The hearing was tough but timely. With the Beijing Olympics approaching, companies like ours expanding into emerging markets, and a general sense that companies should push hard for a collective human rights code of conduct, the hearing gave us a chance to share the Yahoo! vision for a path forward.

I tried to convey this simple message: We believe in the power of information and in global engagement, we were an industry pioneer in international markets, we take responsibility for our actions, we’ve learned valuable lessons, and we’re taking concrete steps on our own and collectively to be leaders in the field of business and human rights. You can read my testimony here.

The following day, I presented at the U.S. Department of State on a panel on Business & Human Rights. Sitting next to three other global companies in entirely different industries, I emphasized our commitment at Yahoo! to the principles of free expression and privacy and to working collectively with technology companies and others to create industry standards to guide companies in the world’s most challenging markets. I also discussed our collaboration with the State Department through its Global Internet Freedom Taskforce and our other efforts, including Jerry’s letter earlier this year to Secretary Rice.

At the Senate hearing, Senator Tom Coburn used an expression we’ve often heard and used at Yahoo!: Information is power. We continue to believe in that simple axiom. Information is empowering to ordinary citizens across the globe. Yahoo! is built on the power of information, and we’ll continue to harness that power for good.

Michael Samway
VP & Deputy General Counsel

We’re acutely aware Yahoo!’s products, technology, and operating footprint increasingly have potential to intersect human rights issues — in particular freedom of expression and privacy — around the world.

Today we’re announcing the launch of our Business & Human Rights Program, and through it we hope to help define ourselves as an industry leader in this important field. It’s no secret that certain governments around the world 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 governments, we also know corporations have important obligations in the field of human rights.

The Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Program represents another step forward in our commitment to human rights, and a number of pillars support this program:

• Executive Commitment. We’ve got it. For those of us who’ve been with Jerry in meetings on Capitol Hill, at the State Department, or with human rights activists, the long-term commitment is clear.
• Dedicated and Cross-Functional Teams. The Program will expand our core team and continue 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 we’ll continue translating those principles into practical steps to be followed by our employees.
• Human Rights Touch-Point Inventory + Clearinghouse. We’ll constantly review the intersection points of our business with potential human rights issues and ensure risks 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.
• Internal and External Stakeholder Engagement. The single most important stakeholders are our users. We also must stay closely connected to our employees and maintain our strong relationships with industry peers, human rights groups, academics, and governments, including our own State Department.
• Accountability Framework. We also believe in designing an effective system to assess our own performance in meeting our overall goals and our operational steps relating to human rights issues.

We’re a company built on open access to information and user trust . We’ve encouraged scholarship on technology and human rights, funding two university fellowships so far. We’ve also teamed up with a noted human rights activist to create the Yahoo! Human Rights Fund. We’re deeply committed to the current collective initiative with industry peers, human rights groups, academics, and socially responsible investors to design standards to guide companies in challenging markets.

We believe companies can move forward today to integrate human rights decision-making into their business operations, and we intend to show our own leadership and commitment to freedom of expression and privacy through the creation of the Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Program.

Michael Samway
VP & Deputy General Counsel

“Using technology to make the world a better place.” That was the theme of remarks I made yesterday at Georgetown University, where I had the chance to honor the research of Irene Wu, the inaugural Yahoo! International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet Fellow. Irene’s work is part of a partnership we created with Georgetown a year ago to study the link between international values and Internet and communications technologies.

Our goal is to inspire scholars to explore new ways to use technology for good, particularly in navigating the complexities that go hand-in-hand with the shrinking globe that the Internet has created. These are complexities we at Yahoo! are well familiar with. While we’ve been at the forefront of opening up new communications and information frontiers for citizens of the world, we’ve also seen the challenges that come when these technologies are used by governments for other purposes – those that run counter to our values.

Although our challenges have been widely reported, the full scope of efforts we’ve been making to address freedom of expression and other human rights issues may not be as well known. So I thought I’d take an opportunity to set out some examples:

• Industry Code of Conduct: We’ve been working with industry counterparts, academics, human rights organizations, and socially responsible investors to develop a code of conduct that would guide leading global technology and communications companies operating in challenging markets. We hope to announce the results of our collective efforts in the near future.
• Academic Fellowships: In addition to the Georgetown Fellowship program, we also initiated the Yahoo! International Journalism Fellowship at Stanford in conjunction with the John S. Knight Fellowships program. It focuses on journalists from press-restrictive countries, allowing them to withdraw from their environments for a year of study. The first fellow came from Pakistan and this year’s fellow is from Zimbabwe.
• Human Rights Fund: Recognizing the plight of unfairly imprisoned political dissidents, we established a Human Rights Fund last month to provide humanitarian and legal support for these individuals and their families. We’ve partnered with noted human rights activist Harry Wu, who spent 19 years in a Chinese labor camp, to administer the fund. It will also support educational efforts on human rights. We’re so grateful to have Harry’s partnership in this.
• Policy Dialogue: While we’re committed to advancing human rights globally, there are practical limits to corporate diplomacy. That’s why we’ve been urging government officials in the United States and abroad to advocate for policy change. We believe governments have the most leverage to influence the decision-making of other governments.
• Advocating for Freedom: Having followed these issues intently and having now met personally with the families of dissidents, I understand our responsibility in advocating for their release. In fact, just yesterday, I went to Capitol Hill with Harry Wu to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Dianne Feinstein to discuss these issues. And I recently sent a letter to Condoleezza Rice before her visit to Beijing, urging support in seeking freedom for Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning. With the Summer Games approaching, there seems to be a perfect window of opportunity for exerting diplomatic leverage. Senior Yahoo! leaders have also met with high-level Chinese and U.S. officials to directly appeal for release. We’ll continue to pursue this doggedly.

We’ve learned important lessons from our experience in China. We hope our experiences and plans can help guide other companies and ultimately influence the emergence of more open societies around the globe — when technology can truly be used to make the world a better place.

Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo