Amnesty International
The Committee on NGOs is entrusted with facilitating civil society access so that the expertise and experience of civil society partners can enrich and inform UN debates. It needs members committed to fulfilling this mandate in a fair, transparent, non-discriminatory and apolitical manner.
In 2020, Facebook (now Meta) commissioned the law firm Foley Hoag to conduct a Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) to evaluate its role in spreading hate speech and incitement to violence on its services in India. A year and a half later, the HRIA has not yet been released.
The undersigned organisations condemn the use of NSO Group’s Pegasus technology in El Salvador for the surveillance of journalists and civil society, as initially flagged by local independent media and confirmed through a joint investigation by global and regional civil society organisations.
Following revelations that Israeli NSO Group’s Pegasus Spyware was used to hack the devices of six Palestinian human rights activists, we urge the EU to take serious and effective measures against NSO Group, including its designation under the EU’s global human rights sanctions regime.
APC and other civil society organisations call on UN Human Rights Council (HRC) member states to take urgent action at the ongoing 48th HRC session to denounce the unfolding and unprecedented scale of human rights violations by states facilitated by the use of the NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.
Dozens of civil society organisations and independent experts joined forces to express their alarm at the media revelations that NSO Group’s spyware has been used to facilitate human rights violations around the world on a massive scale and to call on states to take immediate measures.
In 2011, the UN General Assembly resolved to maintain the status of the Human Rights Council as a subsidiary body and to consider the question again 10 to 15 years later. Our organisations wish to express their position regarding the expected consideration of this question between 2021 and 2026.
APC and a coalition of over 60 other organisations are calling on Facebook and Google to provide equal and better transparency regarding political advertising on their platforms globally. Online transparency should not be a privilege of the few, but the right of all.
Amnesty International India announced that it is halting its work in the country after the Indian government froze its bank accounts in an act of reprisal for the organization’s human rights work.
APC joined with other civil society organisations to congratulate and welcome Irene Khan to her new role as Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and to highlight some broad priority themes that require particular attention.
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2022
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