Global Digital Compact and corporate accountability. The role of counter- hegemonic countries in human rights protection

International law in the modern world is in the state of crisis. International agree- ments and legal acts, both mandatory and recommendatory, are violated more and more ohen, while international principles that have been created by the interna- tional community throughout history, such as bona fides, pacta sunt servanda, ex consensu advenit vinculum, sovereign equality, peaceful settlement of disputes, non-use of force, non-intervention, as well as jus cogens, are not fully complied with; for example, the Paris Agreement, the Minsk Protocol, the International Arms Trade Treaty or the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Besides, international intergovernmental organizations and their mechanisms have no political or legal weight to observe the principle of legal certainty and ensure inter- national legal protection, as they are under constant threat of funding cut-off.
Simultaneously with weakening of international law, there appeared large cor- porations and transnational companies that possess enormous economic power and in fact became subjects of international relations, mostly under the auspices of “neoliberal” governments, where the border between public and private interests

is lost. It is no secret that large corporations associated with the so-called “deep state”, which means a secret government of a state acting in the interests of cer- tain individuals through networks of powerful and corrupt groups, such as pharma- ceutical, agro-industrial, weapons, mining, and extractive companies, are carrying out activities that result in violation of human rights, theh of resources, extreme inequality, poverty, and violence in developing countries, as well as illegal migra- tion fr om the North to the Global South, and are staying unpunished.
Large technology corporations also known as Big Tech are posing no less of a danger today, as they dominate in such areas as e-commerce, social media, cloud computing, and control significant portion of the stock market. Thus, it is of no sur- prise that some tech billionaires such as Elon Musk of Tesla and Neuralink, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Blue Origin, as well as CEOs Tim Cook of Apple, Sundar Pichai of Google, and Show Chu of Tiktok “supported” the newly elected US President Donald Trump. Musk is known for transforming his X platform into a booster for Donald Trump and donating 277 million dollars to his election campaign. In response, the president appointed him as the head of the US Department of Government Efficiency. As for Bezos, he changed his anti-Trump course that he pursued during his first presidential term and reformed the Wash- ington Post having declared: “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets” (X, Jeff Bezos), which turned out to be in favor of the current president, and also invested over 40 million dollars in documentary about the US first lady Melania Trump.
In terms of international law, adoption by the United Nations of the Pact for
the Future and its annex, the Global Digital Compact, on 23 September 2024, cre- ates a new challenge for human rights and raises the following questions:
What are the punishments provisioned for large technology companies that violate human rights? What is the so-called techno-feudalism? What shall be the role of counter-hegemonic countries in protection of human rights? These ques- tions are difficult to answer, but let’s briefly discuss some of them.
What is the Global Digital Compact and what are the risks that it poses for human rights?

The Pact for the Future and its annexes — the Global Digital Compact and the Declaration on Future Generations — constitute the “soh law”, an ambitious roadmap for the upcoming years, in which governments and international organi- zations undertake to take certain measures in order to address current and future problems. The Global Digital Compact, in its turn, provides comprehensive basis for global control of digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI). 20 years aher the World Summit on the Information Society it outlines the ways to develop global digital cooperation aimed at the use of the enormous potential of digital technologies and overcoming of digital inequality.

However, some critics noted that the UN is lacking real measures on imple- mentation of the Digital Compact. No legal responsibility is provisioned for compa- nies developing digital technologies, there are no mechanisms to guaranty respect for the rights that ohentimes can be violated, such as digital identity, privacy, per- sonal data protection, right of personal security, right of equality and non-discrim- ination, right of access to information, and freedom of expression. Besides, labor rights, environmental rights, mental health rights, and many other can be violated, such as the fourth generation of rights associated with access to technologies and virtual space, i. e. mobile technologies, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, cloud technologies, 5G and 6G networks, machine learning, blockchain, Internet of things, and robotics that affect life of all people in the world. In this connection, such countries as Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, Brunei, Burkina Faso, the Central Afri- can Republic, Chad, El Salvador, Haiti, and Venezuela did not sign the Pact for the Future and its annexes.
Responsibility of corporations for violation of human rights resulting fr om the Global Digital Compact and other international documents

The Global Digital Compact, the most “advanced” and relevant document on digital technologies in the world, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance, the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation, Recommendation on the Ethics of Artifi- cial Intelligence, and UNDP Digital Strategy 2022-2025 provide no international responsibility for companies that violate human rights. It is only the Guiding Princi- ples that indicate as a remedy mechanism that states shall take measures to ensure that victims can access effective legal remedies, if such violations by companies occur on their territory and/or under their jurisdiction. It is proven that in most of the cases it is impossible, as these companies are powerful and were not subjected to sanctions, except for
some very illustrative cases, for example, in the European Union, wh ere Meta
received 10 fines for the total amount of 2.7 billion euros for violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (Melo, Grandes tecnológicas, 2025).
Thus, private companies concentrate development of digital technologies in their hands; it is them who define the rules, spaces, and ways of interaction, i. e. effect self-regulation or decide, what standards to apply; legal loopholes allow the use of technology to violate and infringe on human rights, as well as aggravate inequality and current discrimination. Besides, the Global Digital Compact does not indicate that assessment of the impact on different age groups and vulnerable or minority groups in the use of new technologies shall be regulated somehow, and it does not provide for any sanctions for development of digital identity programs outside of privacy and data protection framework (Amnesty International, 2024),

or for illegal or excessive surveillance, distortion of information, harassment, hate speech, and violence on the Internet.
Corporate power and techno-feudalism

Big Tech is acting in much the same way as the feudal system of the Mid- dle Ages, but adapted to the conditions of the digital era and global market. Thus, in comparison, under feudalism there was a hierarchical structure where, on one hand, feudal lords owned the land and were at the top of the system, while, on the other hand, peasants/serfs worked on it in exchange for protection and share of the produce being at the lowest and most vulnerable position in the system. In the dig- ital age, techno-feudalism is becoming like feudalism where some tech corpora- tions take on the role of feudal lords, owners of digital territories, and users become like serfs who are dependent on these platforms in exercising of their human rights. In this sense, such concentration also resembles monopoly, as although some states develop digital technologies, most of them are not involved in this. It is also necessary to take into account low competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises that have no capital for investments in technology development. Inac- cessibility of digital innovations for poor countries and their citizens results in a huge gap. Intellectual property rights restrict access to them for people, mainly
people with limited resources.
It is important to mention that these companies are powerful not only due to accumulation of capital, but also due to the communication abilities and digital resources that allow them to affect people, as well as control and persuade them. They collect information, metadata and personal data that is used in a non-trans- parent manner, ohentimes without obtaining of consent, and are not acknowl- edged as subjects of international law, which means that they are not subject to international responsibility.
Role of counter-hegemonic countries in protection of human rights

The non-aligned countries are not the old Cold War blocks. Today, the world is divided into new blocks — associations of counter-hegemonic countries, the main representatives of which today are the BRICS countries. BRICS is the union of five countries forming an economic and political partnership. It includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The block challenges the hegemonic empire led by United States and the European Union and condemns the ability of major IT com- panies to create and overthrow governments.
Based on the above, it is important that BRICS countries and counter-hege- monic countries move further supporting new mandatory mechanisms and system of international responsibility for companies developing digital technologies. Soh law of the Pact for the Future is not enough, as technological competition and eco-

nomic interests are too attractive, and even if some of these private companies start following the “recommendations”, many others will not, as it was the case with the advanced UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. We should take into account that states are unequal in terms of power and economic resources (Berrón, 2016), thus international law shall not impose on weak states comprising the majority in the international community fulfillment of the obligations of large and powerful corporations that have every opportunity to violate human rights and stay unpunished. In fact, many transnational corporations have developed various ways to bypass sanctions and violate human rights to increase their profits (Why is it important?, 2022).
It is not just human rights that are at stake, but also peaceful existence and security at the international level. Digital technologies are closely related to AI, due to which various fields and disciplines of knowledge are developing, such as med- icine, education, economics, law, and many others, or transcendental issues that include national security, monetary system, and strategic natural resources, such as water, minerals, energy, and rare earths, as well as such global assets of humankind as outer space and open sea.
AI evolves at an extremely fast pace due to the profits that it is generating. The situation resembles a revolution similar to the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, although the danger associated with AI is declared even by its own devel- opers, such as Sam Altham, CEO of OpenAI, who told about the disruptive poten- tial of AI, or Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoh, who said on The Tonight Show: “Most things will be created by AI, and it will replace humans in countless tasks... humans will no longer be needed for most things in the world.”
In this respect, the world is leaving the neoliberal era when people were objectified; in the dystopian digital future, people will matter less than things, their potential will be devalued to the level of mere consumer, and rights and dignity of people as creative, unique, and irreplaceable creatures will be reduced to nothing. Toconclude, itispossibletomentionthatnotechnologycompanywithprivateor pseudo-private interests that acts in cooperation with one or more states can be superior to other states, international norms, the rule of law at the state level, and, of course, people. Use of social media platforms and networks to organize rebel- lion was demonstrated in major political movements such as the so-called “Arab Spring,” when during the digital transition social media were used to promote pro- test movements against dictatorship in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, and Syria, although in the end social networks were used to overthrow political leaders, who do not correspond to the interests of the West, such as Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Bubarak in Egypt. The process of “democratization” did not help prom-
ises of the new governments in the area of political reforms and social justice to
come true. In fact, these countries are still facing wars, poverty, inequality, violation of human rights, and forced displacement of population (Alcalde, “US Interven- tion”).

Intellectual property rights hinder equal access to digital technologies, thus it is important that states invest in technologies to restrict such rights and excessive profit-making by private entities. An example here is ChatGPT by private company OpenAI without open access and DeepSeek, an AI chat developed by Chinese government that is in public access and has no restrictions, requires no registra- tion, subscription or payment for access to AI for user request interpretation and generation of coordinated and automated responses.
As in the past, when countries of the “communist” block called for signing of one of the most important documents on human rights, i. e. the International Cov- enant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the counter-hegemonic block shall become a powerful international counterweight and be able to lim it the ability of IT companies to further violate human rights. Today, more than ever the most balanced, fair, equal, and peaceful world order is required.