cybersecurity
Civil society organisations have an important role in making sure that cyber capacity building is informed by human rights, following one of the capacity-building guiding principles in the previous OEWG final report.
Women and girls as well as people of diverse sexualities and gender expressions are more often the targets of online violence, and are increasingly targeted by disinformation campaigns, which can have a more severe impact on these groups because of historical and structural inequalities.
Although multilateral forums including the United Nations have made some progress in identifying norms, rules and principles to guide responsible state behaviour in cyberspace, applying agreed norms to "real life" throws up challenges of interpretation and enforcement.
A joint letter urges members of the UN Ad Hoc Committee drafting a potential Cybercrime Treaty to ensure that human rights protections are included at every step and global civil society is provided opportunities to participate in the development process.
In this statement, APC calls on the Open-ended Working Group (OEWG) to recognise that existing and emerging cyber threats impact differently on groups subject to intersecting forms of discrimination, including women and people of diverse sexualities and gender expressions.
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.
APC sees RightsCon as a convening space for strategising and networking, as well as an opportunity to showcase APC’s work and perspectives on human rights in the digital space, a feminist internet, access and digital inclusion, social justice and environmental sustainability.
After two years of negotiations, the UN Open-ended Working Group (OEWG) on developments in the field of information and telecommunications in the context of international security has adopted its final report. Here, APC presents its positions on the most salient points of the report.
APC welcomes the opportunity to engage in this session. We appreciate Ambassador Lauber’s openness to civil society and the OEWG’s willingness to receive and consider comments by non-state actors.
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.

Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 2022
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