Submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association by Association for Progressive Communication (APC). The submission has three parts: the conceptualisation of freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association on the internet, country specific cases and recommendations.

A report from the APC workshop organised at the 2011 IGF in Kenya. Workshop participants discussed examples of current internet related human rights violations, considered implications for development, freedom access and diversity, shared strategies for remedies and accountability against human rights violators, opportunities and challenges for seeking remedies, how human rights is a growing theme in the IGF, and the role of government, private sector and civil society in taking these issues forward together.

The sixth annual meeting of the IGF will take place in Nairobi, Kenya from 27-30 September 2011 with Internet as a catalyst for change: access, development, freedoms and innovation as its main theme. In this document presented in the run-up to the IGF APC strongly supports the focus on access, development and freedoms but outlines a series of recommendations for IGF participants.

If we don’t consider the recent actions —particularly by the US government— against people connected to WikiLeaks as human rights violations, then a dangerous precedent is set says APC in a statement.

Input provided by APC following the Structure of the Report on Improvements to the Internet Governance Forum, 14 March 2011.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was a major UN conference on information and communication technologies (ICTs) that took place in Geneva in 2003 and Tunis in 2005. This is APC’s contribution to an invitation from UN CSTD to the different stakeholders to submit inputs concerning the implementation and follow-up of WSIS outcomes. Our response includes a reflection on the process and issues.