internet governance

APC, members and partners are playing a key role in three exciting events happening in Durban, South Africa: the African Gender and Internet Governance eXchange (gigX), the African School on Internet Governance (AfriSIG) and the African Internet Governance Forum (AfIGF).

Mohammed Maskati at IGMENA, Tunis. 2 October 2016. Photo by Leila Nachawati Rego Mohammed al-Maskati is a renowned Bahraini human rights defender and founder of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights. He works as a digital security consultant for Front Line Defenders, a human rights organisation founded in 2001 to protect human rights defenders at risk. He has worked with a diversity of int...

Together for a free and open internet is the motto for this year’s IGMENA Summit, an event bringing together more than a hundred digital rights activists, human rights defenders, journalists and other stakeholders around internet rights and internet governance in the Middle East and North Africa, between 30 September and 2 October in Tunis.

The key question of this volume is to what extent South Africa has used its power and influence for human rights promotion and protection abroad. APC’s Anriette Esterhuysen, Emilar Vushe and Deborah Brown co-authored the chapter on privacy, security and internet governance.

This study documents the NETmundial process, looks at what worked well and what did not, specifically in terms of processes and methodology, and what lessons can be extracted and applied to other global internet governance processes, particularly the Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

Internet governance is one of the most pressing global public policy issues of our time. Some estimates put the economic contribution of the internet as high as 4.2 trillion dollars in 2016. Yet across multiple levels, the internet’s basic functionality and the rights of users are under strain.

This issue paper links challenges to civil participation in internet governance in the Middle East and North Africa and the state of internet rights in the region with civil society advocacy strategies, as well as providing some recommendations, with a focus on Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.  

This new phase of the WSIS process is a unique opportunity to focus on the interaction between technology and the various aspects of development, recognising that technology alone cannot resolve development challenges and that the information society is primarily a matter of human development.