Colombia
In this fourth part of the series on Our Circular Future, Colnodo’s Plácido Silva tells us about good and bad electronic waste management practices in Colombia and their impact on education.
Colombia-based APC member Colnodo presented a statement at the Global Digital Compact thematic deep dive event on digital inclusion and connectivity. We spoke with Julián Casasbuenas about their experiences with community networks and civil society participation in the GDC process.
A diverse range of people with different backgrounds are building community networks in many countries in the LAC region. They are demonstrating that community networks can be a process in which technologies, communications and access are moulded to meet local realities, dreams and needs.
How are APC members improving their communities’ lives? Colnodo made meaningful contributions to the community networks movement by supporting three such initiatives in Colombia while strengthening its own strategy.
Karisma, FLIP, ILEX, CEJIL, IFEX, Derechos Digitales and APC urge the Human Rights Council to call on the Colombian state to guarantee, respect and protect the exercise of human rights online and offline in the country.
We firmly reject the violent repression in Colombia in response to the massive protests which began on 28 April. The Colombian state has the obligation to adopt the necessary measures to guarantee freedom of assembly and association and freedom of speech, on the internet and on the streets.
As a part of the ITU's pandemic response, the platform REG4COVID was launched, providing a space for regulators and civil society to share their own initiatives. APC asked their community network partners to contribute to the platform, given the general absence of civil society input.
Most of the spectrum sharing to date has focused on TV white spaces, and extending it to the IMT bands, those used for mobile broadband, and hence being able to reach users' handsets, is a major advance in the advocacy work that Colnodo has been leading in Colombia for this to happen.
This pilot project involves mounting a mobile telephone network in the municipality of Buenos Aires, Cauca. We spoke with Colnodo director Julián Casasbuenas about the use of spectrum in Colombia and how important it is for the communities involved to be able to use it directly.
The “digital divide” in Colombia is particularly wide in rural communities, since service coverage, especially cellular mobile service, is concentrated in urban centres. In 2017, communities in the municipality of Buenos Aires began planning and developing their own communications network.
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2022
Unless otherwise stated, content on the APC website is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)