A/HRC/41/49 implications of the three pillars of the Guiding Principles (protect, respect, remedy) in the context of emerging technologies. It was stressed that both the tech companies engineering new products and companies deploying them in their business needed to exercise due diligence and consider how their actions might impact on human rights. Key issues discussed included the need to avoid discriminatory effects in programming systems and building in controls on data gathering and surveillance to prevent misuse of sensitive information. Another issue is the impact of automation: participants discussed the extent of corporate responsibility to assist workers when jobs were automated out of existence. It was suggested that responsible business action and human rights due diligence needed to involve engagement with workers and trade unions and the provision of fair warning to those affected. However, participants underlined the need to further clarify the practical limits on what business was expected to and could do in such scenarios and where to draw the line of responsibility between government and business action. 82. Focusing on opportunities provided by new technology for the field of business and human rights, participants at one session asked how human rights due diligence could be scaled up through the use of blockchain technology. They highlighted the potential of such technology as a means for addressing the challenge of creating a structure in supply chains that tended to be unstructured and lacked visibility. The technology allowed for understanding the object of the chain, its owner and the specificities of the process, and could provide better traceability and transparency in the transaction analysis recording, for example, all the information relating to certificates of origin. A fundamental challenge remained, however, with regard to ensuring the quality of the information that was input. Blockchain technology was seen by participants as a tool that presented interesting potential for improving human rights due diligence and access to remedy for human rights violations once the existing limitations were overcome. At the same time, it was stressed that technology was not a silver bullet solution and could not replace meaningful engagement with affected stakeholders. E. Implementing the Guiding Principles in conflict and post-conflict contexts 83. The Working Group organized a session to address new ways to strengthen corporate respect for human rights in conflict and post-conflict contexts as part of the initial consultation process to inform its project to clarify the practical steps that companies, investors and States should take to implement the Guiding Principles in such settings. 22 The member of the Working Group who led the discussion recalled that some of the worst human rights abuses involving business often occurred amid conflict over the control of territory, resources or political power and that in the commentary to the Guiding Principles, it is noted that the human rights regime could not be expected to function as intended in those contexts; this had implications for both State action (in particular home States, as host States were unable to protect human rights or were themselves actors in a conflict) and corporate human rights due diligence. The Working Group member recalled that the Guiding Principles spell out expectations for both Governments and companies, and explained that the new project would seek to unpack further practical guidance. Underexplored questions that the Working Group project aims to address include: • What does “enhanced” human rights due diligence, which companies are expected to undertake, mean in practical terms? • What is the role of business in transitional justice? • What concrete elements of human rights and conflict-sensitive practice should be adopted by host and home States, international financial institutions, private investors and companies in post-conflict and reconstruction situations? 22 See www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Business/Pages/ConflictPostConflict.aspx. 19