Internet rights are human rights

We at EngageMedia have been busy ensuring the safety of our staff and affiliates in the countries we work in: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Australia. This has included closing our offices and shifting to a fully remote setup, which fortunately has mostly been our default since we began in 2005. 

While emergency measures like these are adopted with the aim of slowing the spread of the virus in order to protect public health, it is crucial to ensure that any use of surveillance technology for these purposes strictly adheres to the criteria of necessity and proportionality.

The undersigned organisations express their concern over the announcement of the use of satellite monitoring and georeferencing systems to track individuals as part of the disease containment measures established in Ecuador to confront the COVID-19 epidemic.

In the face of a rising number of attacks on journalists in Bangladesh, Voices for Interactive Choice and Empowerment (VOICE), an APC member organisation, hosted a day-long media training workshop to discuss the challenges faced by journalists and explore solutions for this growing problem.

APC's statement presented at the stakeholder meeting with the Human Rights Committee on the Revised Draft General Comment No. 37 on Article 21 (Right of Peaceful Assembly) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) on 9 March 2020.   

Ola Bini is a computer expert and human rights defender recognised worldwide, who is facing a political-judicial process in Ecuador since April 2019. In regards to this, Ecuadorian and international civil society organisations have decided to attend, as observers, the preparatory hearing and trial evaluation of 5 March 2020.

APC outlines positions on some of the areas covered in the digital strategies presented by the European Commission that will undoubtedly set a key precedent for global discussions on issues such as regulating platforms, data governance and artificial intelligence.

Political information and communication ecosystems have been changing lately. In many countries, social media and other online sources have been displacing newspapers and broadcasting, especially among the young. David Souter shares some thoughts on the implications of this for press freedom and why it matters.