INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES AND HUMAN RIGHTS
The rapid evolution of information and communications technology (ICT) and associated digital communications over the past two decades has dramatically changed communication practices across the world. This has had profound implications for human rights on a number of levels. Firstly, communication technologies are presenting new ways to more fully realise our human rights. This is particularly true of the right to freedom of expression. Secondly, ICTs have provided human rights activists with new tools for defending human rights. Internet access via mobile phones gives citizens the power to communicate rights violations in real time to global audiences; social networking tools connect human rights defenders across the world to enhance collaboration and information sharing; censorship circumvention technologies allow people to bypass attempts to monitor and control information and communication flows. However, as well as unleashing tremendous new opportunities for protecting and advancing human rights, digital communications also present a series of serious challenges. These include direct threats to human rights, such as the development of increasingly sophisticated censorship and surveillance mechanisms. They also include deeper, structural problems such as the persistence of digital divides in access to communications infrastructure and capacities along geographical, gender and social lines.
Study
External author
Lisa HORNER, Head of Research and Policy, Global Partners and Associates ; Dixie HAWTIN, Global Partners and Associates ; Andrew PUDDEPHATT, Director, Global Partners and Associates - London, United Kingdom
About this document
Publication type
Policy area
Keyword
- censorship
- communications
- digital divide
- digital technology
- dissemination of information
- documentation
- EDUCATION AND COMMUNICATIONS
- freedom of communication
- freedom of expression
- human rights
- human rights movement
- impact of information technology
- information and information processing
- information technology and data processing
- LAW
- means of communication
- POLITICS
- politics and public safety
- PRODUCTION, TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH
- rights and freedoms
- technology and technical regulations