digital divide

The sudden and dramatic advent of the COVID-19 global pandemic caught the world by surprise and left many floundering for responses, none more so than those in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector: the policy makers, regulators and internet and other ICT service providers.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, people everywhere are asked to cease physical interactions and the internet has become the lifeline for the work of human rights defenders currently working from home. What does this mean in Uganda, a country with low internet access?

COVID-19 is revealing the extent of the digital divide in Pakistan, and it has resulted in Pakistanis mobilizing on Twitter to demand affordable and accessible Internet services.

In a series of articles exploring the implications of 5G roll-out, Peter Bloom of Rhizomatica concludes that "the imperative to ensure everyone has the right to communicate and access information is being supplanted by this new drive to connect the already connected even further.”

In 2018, the BPF on Gender and Access analysed the potential of supplementary models of connectivity to bridge the gender digital divide. It concluded that these initiatives could be instrumental in helping to overcome the barriers to access faced by women and non-binary people.

What’s the impact of ICTs on equality and inequality? What’s the relationship between digital divides and other inequalities between women and men, old and young, poor and rich? Are new technologies reducing or increasing inequalities?

Civil Society Organisation (NGO), under the auspices of Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) raised a voice against what it described as digital marginalization of women in Nigeria.

Oral statement on bridging the gender digital divide delivered by APC's Deborah Brown under Item 3: General Debate, at the 35th session of the UN Human Rights Council, 14 June 2017.