Internet rights

The 2020 RightsCon will take place online from 27 to 31 July. Throughout the program we plan to promote a global South perspective for human rights online, including by supporting and promoting the important work of APC members.

The newly launched position paper, available in English, French and Portuguese, consolidates Coalition members’ assessment of, and positions on, the promotion, protection and exercise of human rights online in the context of COVID-19.

This position paper is informed by monitoring conducted by the African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms (AfDec) Coalition of developments relating to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified our need for a safe and secure internet. This article explores what happened at the original epicentre of the pandemic and what measures of internet censorship were deemed necessary by the Chinese government to bring it under control.

Media Matters for Democracy (MMfD) is concerned about the insertion of draconian and anti-democratic sections in the draft Personal Data Protection Bill 2020 that has been made public by the Pakistani Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications. 

There is a need to balance the use of technology with human rights in response to the pandemic. Otherwise, we might risk losing the rights and freedoms we had steadily gained over many years.

The Lebanese government announced on 12 March that Ogero, the national internet service provider (ISP), will double the speed and capacity for users until the end of April, but it did not clarify whether the decision includes other privately owned ISPs.

We at EngageMedia have been busy ensuring the safety of our staff and affiliates in the countries we work in: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Australia. This has included closing our offices and shifting to a fully remote setup, which fortunately has mostly been our default since we began in 2005.