Middle East and North Africa
Welcome to the 17th monthly round-up of developments impacting your local access networks. IMPORTANT TO NOTE: APC and Rhizomatica have released a call to apply for the catalytic intervention grants aimed at supporting a more sustainable community network environment. The deadline for applications is 15 May 2019. Read more. 1. Events and conferences “Community Networks and the Identity of African Innovation”, an interview with Nicola Bidwell as part of the Oxford University P...
How can we improve the usability of legal data for civil society, human rights defenders and lawyers? A session was hosted at the Internet Freedom Festival for legal researchers, journalists, civil society advocates and human rights defenders seeking to shape rapidly evolving legal frameworks for digital rights worldwide. CYRILLA, created by APC member Social Media Exchange (SMEX) with the support of APC, fellow APC member Derechos Digitales, the Center for Intellectual Property and Technolog...
Welcome to the 16th monthly round-up of developments impacting your local access networks. 1. Events and conferences On 29 March, from 9:00 to 10:30 CET, Global Access to the Internet for All (GAIA), a research group within the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), is having its regular gathering. Their notes will be available here as well as the video livestream of the event here. The ...
A version of this statement was originally published on advox.globalvoices.org on 29 March 2019. Egyptian blogger and activist Alaa Abd El Fattah was released by authorities late on the night of 28 March after serving five years in prison for defying a protest ban. The news broke on Twitter when his sister, activist Mona Seif, tweeted simply: "Alaa is out." She lat...
Every 66 seconds a post inciting hatred against Palestinians was shared on social media platforms in 2018. Almost half a million calls for violent actions and racist slurs were registered. From all the posts mentioning the term “Arabs”, 1 out of 10 contain an insult or an invitation to violence against Palestinians. These are some of the revelations included in the Index of Racism...
The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and 7amleh - The Arab Centre for Social Media Advancement submit this statement ahead of the Human Rights Council 40th session to express our grave concern about the dramatic upsurge in the number of laws being put forth by Israeli legislators that violate the right to privacy and freedom of expression and often exhibit racist and discriminat...
APC member 7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media launched the report “Connection Interrupted” in English and Arabic. It details the Israeli control over the Palestinian ICT infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza and its impact on the digital rights of the Palestinian people. Since the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967, Israel took complete ...
This report by APC member 7amleh analyses the abstention of the online payment company PayPal and the impact of this stance on the Palestinian economy. It discusses the readiness of the Palestinian economy and the efforts exerted by the Palestine Monetary Authority to overcome the economic obstacles as well as the developments that have taken place in recent years. It presents the purchasi...
APC member 7amleh - The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media will host the Palestine Digital Activism Forum (PDAF) on 16-17 January 2019. The forum will be attended by dozens of individuals and organisations working on digital media and digital rights, including the Association for Progressive Communications, Amnesty International, Deutsche Welle, and Human Rights Watc...
As we start 2019, we want to remember the human rights defenders from our community who are currently facing prison, disappeared or have been killed in retaliation for their work. Among them, we are particularly concerned about the fate of Egyptian free speech activists in the context of increased authoritarianism and repression under the current Egyptian regime, including renowned human rights...
Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2019
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