"Technology for human rights: UN Human Rights Office announces landmark partnership with Microsoft", 16 May 2017

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights [OHCHR] today announced a landmark five-year partnership with Microsoft. As part of the agreement, Microsoft will provide a grant of USD 5 million to support the work of the [OHCHR]. This represents an unprecedented level of support from a private sector organization. A particular area of focus for the partnership will be the development and use of advanced technology designed to better predict, analyze and respond to critical human rights situations, which currently appear not only to be proliferating in many parts of the world – including areas previously viewed as stable – but also growing in complexity. The new partnership builds on a long-standing relationship between the [OHCHR] and Microsoft that is based on two shared ideas. The first is a commitment to ensuring technology plays a positive role in helping to promote and protect human rights. The second is a recognition of the need for the private sector to play a bigger part in helping to advance the cause of human rights globally. “As a global company that sees the problems of the world, we believe that we have a responsibility to help to solve them,” said Brad Smith, President of Microsoft.