The following is a staff insight from GIFCT’s Membership and Programs Senior Lead, Dr. Nagham El Karhili. In this role, she oversees the full membership cycle—recruiting and mentoring new tech platforms and facilitating ongoing engagement with industry, government, and civil-society partners.
The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), in partnership with BSR, delivered a series of human rights trainings for GIFCT member companies and prospective members throughout 2025 and published a Training Modules Booklet containing practical tools and lessons companies can use. The initiative brought together practitioners from industry and human-rights experts to translate human-rights norms into operational guidance for work on terrorist and violent extremist content (TVEC).
Across multiple convenings, participants explored where human-rights obligations intersect with content moderation, product design, takedown and escalation processes, and preventative programming. Overall, the trainings showcased how clearer, rights-respecting processes improve decision-making, reduce harms to vulnerable groups, and strengthen transparency and accountability across platforms.
What’s in the Training Modules
The Training Modules Booklet packages three modular learning paths — each built to be practical, implementable, and easily integrated into company onboarding, policy refreshes, and cross-functional trainings.
1. Introduction to Human Rights
A video training introduces core concepts and why human rights matter for TVEC work. The module also includes a curated list of the most relevant rights in this context, a compact human-rights due diligence tool companies can use to map risk and mitigation, and a vulnerable-groups framework for assessing differential impacts. Information pertaining to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and other foundational references is also included.
2. Human Rights Policy
The second module includes a video walkthrough on drafting and operationalizing human rights policies for tech companies, as well as links to GIFCT member human rights policies and benchmarks for comparison. Supporting resources, including GIFCT’s Human Rights Roadmap, our Human Rights Impact Assessment, and GIFCT’s Human Rights policy, are also listed for reference.
3. A Human-Rights Based Approach to Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism
The third video training focuses on embedding rights into policies and product flows designed for counterterrorism operations. Additional resources in this module include reporting principles designed to protect users while ensuring responsiveness and redress, and the Human Rights cycle of a terrorist incident.
Why this matters
As threat actors evolve, GIFCT remains committed to supporting our growing 35+ member platform responses to be both effective and rights-respecting in line with human rights obligations. These trainings and the booklet equip companies with shared language, practical tools, and concrete next steps so that interventions are targeted, proportionate, and transparent — minimizing harm while maintaining safety.
GIFCT is grateful to BSR and to the companies and practitioners whose engagement made these trainings possible. The materials are solely for the use of GIFCT members and prospective members.
Become a GIFCT Member
Are you a tech company interested in strengthening your capacity to counter terrorist and violent extremist activity online and accessing GIFCT resources like this Human Rights Training?
Apply for membership and meet with GIFCT’s Membership Advisory Program (MAP), which supports prospective member companies as they work towards full membership, as well as current GIFCT members in ensuring continued alignment with our membership criteria.
MAP provides tech platforms with tailored support designed to meet each company’s unique needs and in alignment with their priorities, such as:
- crafting and revising their policies and/or community guidelines,
- helping improve their human rights commitments, and
- strengthening their commitments to transparency reporting.
GIFCT’s membership spans the full spectrum of the tech stack – including social media, e-commerce, travel marketplaces, file sharing, financial services, and more – demonstrating that no matter your digital service or platform, GIFCT welcomes your engagement and invites you to join its community. To learn more, visit www.gifct.org.
