The International Partnership Group on Azerbaijan, of which APC is a member organisation, urges the UN to hold Azerbaijan to account during its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) for its failure to protect basic human rights.

To publicly challenge increasing censorship, surveillance and internet filtering in Pakistan, APC member Bytes for All, and Media Legal Defense Imitative lodged a petition in the Lahore High Court in January 2013 claiming that the bans imposed on various websites were in blatant violation of civil and political rights.

Last week, APC attended the Fourth Ministerial Conference on the Information Society in Montevideo, Uruguay, organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and attended a pre-event on Open Development: Exploring the future of the information society in LAC. Download and read the Declaration and Plan of action.

While the benefits of the widespread use and applications of ICTs are many, there are also negative impacts, such as those associated with the growth in the amount of e-waste that call for the need to counter effects on environmental pollution and public health.

All initiatives, researches or innovation projects in the field of ICTs for the region of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) that have made a significant contribution to the use of the Internet for the region’s social, economic and cultural development since 2008 may apply for the 2013 FRIDA Award+.

While hidden cameras can document and flag human rights abuses by authoritarian governments, these same videos can then be used to identify dissidents who are later detained and tortured, explains David Sasaki in his introduction to this year’s Global Information Society Watch, which focuses on transparency and accountability online.

At a recent civil society workshop in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, co-organised by APC with Global Partners, NUPEF Institute and the Fundação Getulio Vargas, groups from the region looked beyond the World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai (WCIT) and outlined the following positive principles for constructive multi-stakeholder dialogue.