Freedom of expression

Personal data protection laws have proliferated across the Asia-Pacific but they are often misused to abuse citizens’ right to privacy. We must examine their autocratic bent in the context of a global framework like Europe’s GDPR which is also regularly abused.

This statement was presented at a ministerial meeting convened by the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC), which brought together high-level representatives of FOC member states and other relevant stakeholders in New York on the margins of the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

APC in partnership with the CYRILLA Collaborative is organising the 2023 edition of Internet Rules: Unboxing digital laws in Southeast Asia. The four-day online workshop will be held from 30 October to 2 November 2023. The deadline for applications is 20 September.

Technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) not only hurts women and girls, it impacts on society as a whole, making our societies less peaceful and safe and our democracies less diverse and plural. It is pervasive and constitutes both a cause and an effect of gender inequality.

This edition focuses on research conducted as part of the Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN) initiative that showcases the interconnections of online gender-based violence with different countries' local contexts and everyday realities.

With the introduction of Threads by Meta, there's a need to question whether adding another social media platform to the list of online spaces contributes to the existing problems that women face on the internet, or if instead it is a step in the right direction.

Organisations and independent experts from six Sub-Saharan African countries that share French as one of their national languages have developed an approach for assessing the level of respect for human rights online by their governments: the African Index of Internet Rights and Freedoms.

There is a digital crisis in Venezuela combining a lack of infrastructure with surveillance and severe control of information online. Amidst the siege, civil society is mounting a resistance to keep the digital realm and information flow free and alive.