Communications and Information Policy Programme
CIPP responds to access, governance and rights problems in a consistent, systematic and integrated way, addressing national and regional particularities in Asia, Africa and Latin America and ensuring a multi-directional dynamic between the national, global and the regional levels. This is achieved by providing research/analysis-based substantive insights and framings; facilitating movement building and cross-movement interaction; enhancing the individual and collective agency of people to defend human rights online and to transform lives at local levels; addressing the transforming effect of technology through alternate viewpoints and approaches; developing and building the capacity of civil society and other stakeholders to engage with internet issues and processes, including those related to policy; and advocating for favourable policy options and solutions at global, regional and national levels.
Since the inception of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the Council of Europe, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) have been working on a joint initiative on public participation in internet governance. The three entities have held joint workshops around this theme at both the Rio de Janeiro (2007) and Hyderabad (2008) meetings of the Internet Governance (IGF), and a "discussion paper (paper 1)" was presented.
Working with a broad coalition on internet rights and principles that emerged from the Internet Governance Forum, APC will update the APC Internet Rights Charter and promote it to internet users and policy makers all over the world. It is already translated into 22 languages mainly through the APC member network. We will gather stories that link internet rights, and violations against such rights, to the real-life experiences of individuals and organisations. Members will report violations of...
The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and the Latin American Association of Radio Education (ALER-Asociación Latinoamericana de Educación Radiofónica) are launching an audio version of the APC Charter on internet rights available on the web in the form of podcasts, so that community media, blogs and websites may freely reproduce and adapt them.
APC has been commissioned by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) to investigate the potential for the use of ICTs for advancing democracy. The study is intended to look beyond the simple “use” of ICTs (mainly internet and mobile phones) for democracy and are digging deeper to find out how ICTs permeate the different levels of society. Among others, the study assesses how civ...
APC is currently building a coalition of civil society organisations and businesses to campaign for the lowering of costs associated with the internet in South Africa. The project being carried out with the support of the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (PHEA) will mobilise a number internet service providers (ISPs), communications workers, content providers, academics, alternative e...
In order to reduce poverty and foster inclusive development through affordable access to the internet, APC developed a resource kit for realising a universal access agenda, present promising options, experiences, lessons and opportunities in pro-poor access provision in developing societies.
The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is a multistakeholder policy dialogue space convened by the United Nations Secretary General in 2006 to “foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development of the internet.”
CILAC seeks to integrate research, research communications, network-building and advocacy to make internet broadband universal and affordable. It’s a one year project that started on February 2008.
This two-year research project examines the nature and extent of media piracy and the effect of anti-piracy legislative and enforcement frameworks on access to knowledge in South Africa. The research was carried out by researchers from APC and several South African universities, and forms part of a larger study by researchers in Russia, India, Brazil, Mexico, and Hungary, on media piracy in the...
Oriented to influence national and regional ICT policy processes to ensure that demands and perspectives of civil society organisations are considered.

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