A/HRC/41/41 enforcing laws and policies that focus on creating mandatory requirements for digital technology companies to exercise due diligence to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for how they address any human rights impacts of their business services and products, as well as for robust transparency and remediation mechanisms. These laws should be adopted only after a fully inclusive and participatory consultation process with all stakeholders. 81. States should renew their commitments to a multi-stakeholder approach as a cornerstone of Internet governance processes. Effective cooperation on issues relating to the digital sphere depends on the ability of individuals and groups to exercise their rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. B. Recommendations to digital technology companies 82. Companies should meet their responsibility to respect internationally accepted human rights, including the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, by taking all necessary and lawful measures to ensure that they do not cause, contribute to or become complicit in human rights abuses. 83. Companies should adopt a high-level policy commitment to respect freedom of peaceful assembly and association, and recognize the importance of the role of civil society in democracy and sustainable development. 84. Companies should seek to prevent or mitigate the adverse human rights impacts of their involvement, to the maximum extent allowed by law, whenever they are requested by States to censor, surveil or monitor individuals or groups or to make available data that they collect, process or retain. 85. Companies should recognize international human rights law as the authoritative framework for ensuring that peaceful assembly and association rights are respected in their products and services and should evaluate their policies accordingly. Companies should ensure that their policies and community guidelines are sufficiently clear, accessible and in keeping with international human rights standards. They should also provide more detailed examples or case studies of the way in which their community standards are applied in practice, so that users can understand the circumstances under which personal data or information may be accessed, content may be restricted, or access to the service may be blocked or restricted. 86. Companies should exercise human rights due diligence to identify, prevent, mitigate and address violations of the rights to peaceful assembly and association, including by: (a) Undertaking human rights impact assessments which incorporate the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association when developing or modifying their products and services. The process of assessing impacts should always include consultation with civil society actors and other experts and be validated by an accredited external third party with human rights expertise. (b) Integrating the findings of impact assessments, by taking steps to: increase knowledge and awareness of the rights to peaceful assembly and association, by providing training and issuing guidelines to management, employees and other business-linked actors, such as contractors; adopt policies and procedures which set out how the company will assess and respond to government demands for restrictions to communications or access to content; integrate early warning systems within business processes to identify human rights risks, and respond in a timely fashion; use their leverage to challenge government requests that unduly restrict the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association; support the research and development of appropriate technological solutions to online harassment, disinformation and propaganda, including tools to detect and identify State-linked accounts and bots; adopt monitoring indicators that include specific concerns related to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. 19