Human rights and ICTs
The UN's Global Digital Compact (GDC) seeks to develop a common understanding of key digital principles by taking an inclusive approach to internet governance. The APC network has been actively engaging in the GDC process by participating in numerous UN-led consultations, discussions and submissions.
APC believes it is imperative to place human rights, social justice and sustainable development at the centre at all stages of AI systems, including their creation, development, implementation and governance, and that potential risks should be continually assessed and managed.
This year's RightsCon will be held from 5-8 June in Costa Rica and online, where APC will focus on the themes of gender and sexuality, climate and environmental justice and gender-responsive cybersecurity. Here is our resource kit of knowledge, research and recommended readings to help us all prepare to engage with each other at this event.
APC will award one subgrant for a research project that focuses on the criminalisation of online expression in Sri Lanka, in continuation of research which to date has covered nine countries across South and Southeast Asia. The deadline to apply is 15 June.
In its statement, APC member Derechos Digitales called for the Compact to recognise the internet as a key enabler for the exercise of all human rights, and to promote meaningful access, which can only exist when people can use the internet freely and safely.
Speaking on behalf of the Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication and Bangladesh Internet Governance Forum, APC associate AHM Bazlur Rahman stated that this is an opportune time to reinforce universal access to the internet as a basic human right, not just a privilege.
APC believes that human rights crosscut all the priority themes highlighted for the Global Digital Compact (GDC) and therefore, a human rights framework, standards and principles should be at the centre of the GDC.
APC and its members gave statements at the Global Digital Compact (GDC) thematic deep dive session on the theme of human rights online.
APC believes the Global Digital Compact could play a key role in ensuring that the lessons learned from years of multistakeholder cooperation feed into future processes of internet policy, internet governance and global digital cooperation
Given that digital technologies and the laws and norms that govern them have the potential to perpetuate and worsen pre-existing structural inequalities, APC and Derechos Digitales believe that a central element of this future convention should be the integration of a gender perspective.
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2022
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