80 Civil Society Groups Endorse MAP-AI Open Letter on Human Rights in AI Governance
A coalition convened by the Global Network Initiative and India's CCG urged governments, companies and the UN to ground AI governance in international human rights law.
Summary
The Global Network Initiative reported on 2 October 2026 that more than 80 civil society organisations, academics, technologists and experts have endorsed an open letter titled Centering Human Rights in AI Governance. The letter was published by the MAP-AI Project, short for Multistakeholder Approaches to Participation in AI Governance, which is a joint initiative of the Global Network Initiative itself and the Centre for Communication Governance, based at National Law University Delhi.
The letter is addressed to governments, companies and the United Nations. It asks them to base AI governance and international cooperation in international human rights law, to draw on existing institutions and past lessons, and to deal with present-day harms alongside future technological frontiers. It welcomes the increased attention to AI risks, including worries voiced by AI company leaders and employees, but says these should add to, not replace, harms long documented by others. Those include biased and discriminatory outputs, exploitation of data workers, environmental costs of infrastructure expansion, heightened surveillance and military uses of AI that breach international humanitarian law.
The recommendations fall under three headings. First, human rights should come first: governments should base cooperation and national rules on human rights law, with open and justified processes and enforcement subject to due process, and leading companies should commit to or deepen their adoption of the UN business and human rights principles, the OECD guidelines for multinational enterprises and the GNI Principles. Second, urgency should not crowd out inclusion, so non-company stakeholders should be deeply involved in lawmaking. Third, an ecosystem approach should replace a single treaty and global regulator, with the UN drawing on its Scientific Panel and on the Global Dialogue about AI governance, and the AI Summit series, with Geneva next, backing this agenda.