cybersecurity
From APC’s perspective, we feel it’s important to integrate cybersecurity in our broader work on internet governance capacity building, because cybersecurity touches on so many other areas of internet governance.
This statement focuses on responding to the question: How can non-governmental stakeholders contribute to the implementation of the voluntary non-binding norms of responsible state behaviour contained in the report of the 2015 Group of Governmental Experts?
Efforts to bolster cybersecurity often ignore the human rights dimension, or worse, view human rights as an impediment to cybersecurity. This is a dangerous and misguided assumption. Cybersecurity is a human rights issue, and it is time to start treating it like one.
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.
Created in late 2018 by the UN General Assembly, the Open Ended Working Group on developments in the field of information and telecommunications in the context of international security aims to broaden the dialogue on cybersecurity among member states, and to a certain extent, other stakeholders.
Internet-related and ICT policy processes protect the publicness of the internet and are accessible, democratic, transparent, accountable and inclusive. This is a compendium of the highlights from APC's Annual Report for 2018.
APC welcomes this opportunity to address the OEWG and participate in this informal dialogue with stakeholders. APC and its members are increasingly concerned about state security-centric approaches to cybersecurity policy and the exclusion of civil society from cybersecurity efforts.
APC will be at RightsCon Tunis, the first RightsCon summit hosted in the Middle East and North Africa. Along with our members, we will be involved in more than 45 sessions and events where we will engage in conversations on a range of critical issues. You can also come say hi at our booth!
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
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