The DLA piper athena platform is a web based human rights risk management platform targeted at members of the conservation community including international and national and local ngos as well as…

The DLA piper athena platform is a web based human rights risk management platform targeted at members of the conservation community including international and national and local ngos as well as government officials protected area managers indigenous peoples and local communities researchers rangers donors conservation cooperation partners and other stakeholders. The aim of the athena platform is to foster a rights respecting culture in conservation globally and advance industry standards on human rights due diligence in conservation. The platform will contain resources and practical tools to help stakeholders gain an understanding of the minimum international human rights standards to abide by and support the implementation of processes and mechanisms to identify and mitigate human rights risks throughout their conservation programmes. The platform will contain a user friendly decision tree containing prompts and questions for the user to select responses to based on their operations. The branches and questions will change depending on a users response. The decision tree will guide users to issues they should consider as well as provide helpful documents such as template guidance policies and checklists relevant to their specific operations. The platform will contain additional functionalities in due course including an AI trained document analysis tool a chatbot and or a capability to predict situations where actual human rights violations may occur. A number of activities will be carried out to ensure the success of the project. Firstly the web based platform will be developed including digitalisation of the decision tree framework and translation of the platform into multiple languages including french and other local languages to ensure the platform is accessible for non english speakers. Useful content relating to human rights due diligence in conservation will be available as set out above. Additionally the conservation community will be engaged through the establishment of an advisory committee comprised of conservation experts who will provide valuable insights throughout the platforms development. Finally the platform will be piloted in at least one protected area and in country outreach projects and training will take place. This engagement of the conservation community will inform the development and implementation of the platform and allow feedback to be provided on its usefulness and functionalities including the decision tree function.