Blog

Listen to interview with Anriette Esterhuysen, speaker at the Big Brother and Empowered Sisters conference that took place in Stockholm, Sweden in April 2008.

If you need to reach Jan Chipchase, the best, and sometimes only, way to get him is on his cellphone. The first time I spoke to him last fall, he was at home in his apartment in Tokyo.

Frederick Noronha, of APC member organisation BytesforAll, was crowned Outstanding Participant at the recent Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD) Community workshop in Auroville, India.

There are more than a billion internet users worldwide, and the number is set to double within the next ten years. What will the next billion users mean to the Internet itself? How will it affect the network, the technology, the computer software industry, access to knowledge, and our environment?

As you might be aware of, GK3 is happening smack bang in the middle of a strange moment in Malaysia. We are anticipating our next elections sometime very soon. A Coalition on Free & Fair Elections (BERSIH - meaning 'clean' in Malay) was formed, and organised a peaceful demonstration on this issue. This demonstration sort of catalysed a series of events which is resulting in rapid arrests of communication rights advocates & independent media journalists, opposition party members, civil and political rights activists and BERSIH coalition members. This morning, 26 people were arrested for trying to hand over a memorandum to the parliament. There was massive road blocks on all the routes into the city, and riot police trucks along the parliament route.

The third Global Knowledge Conference, or GK3, has officially started today. The words “emerging people, emerging markets and emerging technologies”, the three main topics that structure this conference, were repeated many times by the speakers (which included the deputy prime minister of Malaysia). The words “human rights” or “freedom”, however, weren not mentioned not even once. This seemed weird, given what is happening in the streets of Kuala Lumpur, a few minutes away from fancy conference centre: people are being arrested for protesting peacefully against the government.

Jayalakshmi Chittoor, from the Indian organisation i4d, was attending the Telecentre Leaders Forum and we met in the corridor. We had 15 minutes to talk about future collaboration and we ended up talking about the Film Festival, a initiative that shows how technology changes people’s lives through video. That’s GK3, the Global Knowledge Conference that officially starts tomorrow in Kuala Lumpur.

Brazilian journalist, Rosangela Berman Bieler, director of the Interamerican Institute on Disability and Inclusive Development who so kindly presented at APC's open day on one of the panels will be recognised with a major human rights award on Wednesday in London.

COAST Trust and Equity and Justice Working Group, in association with 31 coastal NGOs in Bangladesh, organized a seminar “Risk of Climate Change: Loss Compensation” at National Press club .

This seminar is objectively organized to discuss 'climate change risk and loss' in Bangladesh, raise mass awareness on climate change impact and demanding compensate on the eve of UN CoP 13 to be held in Bali from 2-14 December, 2007.

"Secure, affordable access to the internet for all may no longer be
just a dream! In any event, that was my dream today!" expresses Coura
Fall, just after the opening ceremony of the second Internet Governance
Forum in Rio. She looked motivated by many of the speakers on November
12, even though she acknowledges that her dream translates into work,
work and more work. when it comes to her continent: Africa.