In times of crisis, communication must be recognized as a fundamental right and integrated as an essential service, with priority given to local, community-led approaches, panelists agreed at a WSIS+20 session co-organized by WACC and the CDAC Network last week.

Under the theme “Communication is humanitarian aid: Safeguarding rights in a time of risk,” participants at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)+20 High-Level Event explored steps to address communication and information integrity in humanitarian contexts.

Communication plays a vital role in emergency situations – informing and connecting people, providing psycho-social support, prompting discussion, and motivating life-changing action, WACC General Secretary Philip Lee said in his introduction.

Ensure sustainable, adequate funding

Displaced people try to return to northern Gaza from the southern part of the enclave in April 2024. Photo: UNRWA/Ashraf Amra, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Experiences with disaster-affected communities bear this out, confirmed Ila Schoop Rutten, information integrity lead at the CDAC Network.

“People need to have access to safe, reliable information that meets their needs, to be able to participate in decisions that affect their lives, and to have their voices heard by humanitarian responders and decisionmakers.”

In these contexts, funding gaps or shortages have clear impacts on the flow of reliable information to people in crisis, she noted.  When USAID support was suspended earlier in the year, the consequences were immediate – a loss of vital, lifesaving information and an open space for misinformation.

Schoop Rutten reported that CDAC partners have jumped into the breech under incredibly difficult situations, for example in Sudan.

But resilience alone is not enough. She urged the international community to develop “sustained, coordinated, and creative investment” in local, community-based networks of information providers rooted in an approach of two-way communication.

Meet local needs

Panelists (from left) Ila Schoop Rutten, Anriette Esterhuysen, Philip Lee (moderator), Lorenzo Vargas. Photo: WACC

Needs of local communities must be the focus of communication in humanitarian contexts, including situations of protracted displacement, said Lorenzo Vargas, director of WACC’s Communication for Social Change program,

He gave the example of a WACC project that trained Venezuelan migrants in Colombia as citizen journalists. The radio-based network reached over 900,000 people a year, breaking down communication barriers migrants were facing such as limited access to information about their rights and available services, isolation, xenophobic attitudes, and, most importantly, a lack of public voice and sense of being heard.

“We need solutions that are technically and socially relevant,” Vargas said. Such solutions must go beyond provision of information to enabling migrants to feel connected and understood.

Communication should foster dialogue and trust between people on the move, host communities, service providers, and UN actors, he added.

Vargas agreed with Schoop Rutten that financial sustainability is a big concern. “Donors need to understand that information and communication are essential needs in times of crisis.”

He called for the WSIS process to focus on protracted crises as well as the emergency situations mentioned in the Elements paper. And the emphasis on a multistakeholder approach, involving tech experts with people on the ground and UN institutions and States, must continue to develop inclusive, people-centered communication.

Develop international norms

Russian bombardment of telecommunications antennas in Kyiv on 1 March 2022. Photo: Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, CC BY 4.0

Anriette Esterhuysen, consultant with the Association for Progressive Communications and convenor of the African School on Internet Governance, called for a closer look at how international norms address – or don’t – risks to communication integrity in situations of crisis.

“The access to the fundamental right to communicate is even more critical in a crisis situation, but humanitarian law is vague in this area,” she noted.

While governments are not supposed to target civilian infrastructure, the case is not clear cut when it comes to telecommunications because systems can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

Communications infrastructure “is being obliterated” in conflicts throughout the world, Esterhuysen said. With gaps and a lack of norms in the private sector as well there is a “normative desert.”

“Can we establish a multistakeholder mechanism for when there is a crisis situation where people are deprived of access to core internet resources, the ability and right to access, this comes into play, and can we start looking at what can we do?”

She said that the Internet Governance Forum has taken up this question of what can be done to develop norms that are driven by a coherent, consistent humanitarian framework.

“It’s not acceptable that the [IGF, WSIS] community remains passive in the context of what is happening and how people are being deprived of the ability to communicate.”

The WSIS+20 High-Level Event 2025 on 7–11 July marked 20 years since the original two-phase World Summit on the Information Society. Government representatives and stakeholders met to review progress on the WSIS outcomes from 2003 and 2005 and look to the future. The WACC Global WSIS+20 delegation was present, advocating for a new paradigm for digital governance – one rooted in communication rights, with digital justice at the center.

Top image: A migrant citizen journalist from Venezuela conducts an interview. Credit: Grupo Comunicarte