Human rights and ICTs
The 41st session of the Human Rights Council is taking place over three weeks (24 June to 12 July 2019) in Geneva. During this session dozens of reports will be presented on thematic and country-specific human rights situations from UN Special Procedures, the Secretary General and the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Council is expected to adopt on around 25 resolutions. It will also feature the annual full day discussion on the human rights of women, which includes panel discussions o...
1. All governments have the duty to protect the right to freedom of expression and information, all the more so if they are democratically elected. However, the decision to shut down internet access in nine townships in Rakhine and Chin States without any prior notice or limitation clearly infringes these human rights and is a matter of great concern to our organizations as it should be to all of the millions of internet users in Myanmar. The UN Human Rights Council has repeatedly adopted res...
APC will be at RightsCon Tunis, the first RightsCon summit hosted in the Middle East and North Africa, where more than 2,500 expert practitioners will come together across over 400 sessions to shape, contribute to, and drive forward the global agenda for the future of human rights in the digital age. APC will join RightsCon to promote conversations on a range of issues, including...
Access to the internet is becoming subject to increasing restrictions worldwide, including numerous African countries, as we reported a few months ago in “It’s like being cut off from the world”. This is particularly so in the case of Uganda, where the newest member of the APC network, Unwanted Witness, is based. We talked to Dorothy Mukasa, executive director of the organisation, about c...
The Stockholm Internet Forum (SIF) is conceived as “a platform for advancing a free, open and secure internet as a driver of development.” Organised by the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) every two years, it gathers together hundreds of participants from around the world and a wide range of stakeholder groups for the exchange of ideas, knowledge and collaboration. At this ye...
Unwanted Witness was established in 2012 by a group of netizens, bloggers, activists, writers and human rights defenders as an independent, non-partisan and not-for-profit civil society organisation. It seeks to create secure uncensored online platforms to promote human rights through writing, informing and educating citizens who also utilise the platforms for strengthening free expression an...
Dear President Juncker, Dear First Vice-President Timmermans, Dear Vice-President Ansip, Dear Commissioner Gabriel, Dear Director General Roberto Viola, The undersigned stakeholders represent fundamental rights organisations, the knowledge community (in particular libraries), free and open source software developers, and communities from across the European Union. The new Directive on Copyright...
In a scenario that is increasingly visual, video has become a powerful tool to challenge social and environmental injustice. But making change is not as simple as making a video. This is how APC member EngageMedia presents its newly launched Video for Change Impact Toolkit, an online resource that can help activists harness the power of video to advocate for issues as pressing as extrajudicial ...
Events in the first quarter of 2019 indicate that Africa urgently needs to agree on a homegrown strategy for the protection and promotion of online rights and freedoms on the continent. During the Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum (DRIF) held in Lagos, Nigeria on 24-25 April 2019, at a session hosted by APC on behalf of the African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms Secretariat, parti...
The Stockholm Internet Forum (SIF), organised by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) is taking place between 16 and 17 May in Stockholm, preceded by the activities happening at the Pre-SIF on 15 May. The Forum aims to provide a space to explore the most recent threats against democracy online and the responses needed to mobilise openness in the context of shrinking d...
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2019
Unless otherwise stated, content on the APC website is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)