Global Partners Digital (GPD)
Global Partners Digital (GPD) is a social purpose company dedicated to fostering a digital environment underpinned by human rights and democratic values. They do this by making policy spaces and processes more open, inclusive and transparent, and by facilitating strategic, informed and coordinated engagement in these processes by public interest actors. In 2016, GPD supported APC for the implementation of the “Africa regional workshop, “The Internet as a Driver of Free Expression in Africa”.
In the Roadmap on Digital Cooperation launched in 2020, the UN Secretary General proposes reforms to promote the strengthening of the Internet Governance Forum, so that it could become "more responsive and relevant to current digital issues."
In this response to the first substantive draft of the Open-ended Working Group on ICTs (OEWG) report, APC and other civil society organisations provide general feedback, focusing on the “introductory remarks” and the “conclusions and recommendations” sections, and provide recommendations.
The coalition of civil society groups undersigned are committed to supporting the implementation of the vision in which “all stakeholders play a role in advancing a safer, more equitable digital world, one which will lead to a brighter and more prosperous future for all.”
The APC Impact Report 2016-2019 encapsulates the APC network's high level impact over the four years of our strategic cycle, which ended in 2019. While the report looks back at our work, it also brings us forward through the strategic direction that we set for ourselves in the next four years.
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the dissemination of vast amounts of information, both verified and unverified. Against this backdrop, civil society organisations recently launched the Disinformation Tracker, an interactive map to track disinformation laws and policies across Sub-Saharan Africa.
APC welcomes this opportunity to address the United Nations Open-ended Working Group and to participate in this informal dialogue with stakeholders. We urge a rights-based and inclusive approach to understanding threats in cyberspace.
At the UN First Committee, two processes – the UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) and the Open-ended Working Group – are exploring the same question: responsible state behaviour in cyberspace. This paper examines norms in cyberspace, or "cyber norms", and their relevance to human rights.
Countering cybercrime is a key challenge that requires international cooperation. However, the approach taken in the draft resolution “Countering the use of information and communications technologies for criminal purposes” is fundamentally flawed and would restrict the use of the internet for human rights, and social and economic development.
The 14 civil society organisations supporting this statement, including APC, stress that cybersecurity includes the protection of human rights, and cybersecurity-related laws, policies and practices should not be used as a pretext to violate human rights.
In 2018, the First Committee established two parallel processes to discuss responsible state behaviour in cyberspace: the UN Group of Governmental Experts and the Open Ended Working Group. This explainer offers human rights defenders the information they need to engage with these processes.
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)