Surveillance Risks in Conflict-Affected & High-Risk Areas: A Salient & Material Concern for Investors

Description

This resource examines the human rights and financial risks associated with surveillance technologies, with a particular focus on their deployment in conflict-affected and high-risk areas (CAHRA). It outlines how tools such as spyware and biometric surveillance, while often framed as efficiency-enhancing, have been used to enable serious human rights abuses, including unlawful detention, persecution, and violations of privacy.

Aimed at investors and civil society organizations, the paper provides a framework for understanding how these human rights harms translate into material risks for companies and shareholders, including legal liability, sanctions, export controls, operational disruptions, and reputational damage. It introduces the concept of a “saliency–materiality nexus” to help identify the most severe and systemic risks within investment portfolios and situates investor responsibilities within the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.