09 Dec 2024 Communication rights uphold human rights

“Our Rights, Our Future, Right Now” is the theme of Human Rights Day, 10 December 2024. The focus is on people’s inalienable rights – regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, or other status – which must be guaranteed if the world is to have a better and peaceful future.

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) famously says, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Yet, in the UN’s recent Pact for the Future, adopted in September 2024, only three scant references to freedom of expression appear. One is in the Pact itself and the other two in the Pact’s Annex I, Global Digital Compact. Strikingly, freedom of opinion and expression are not mentioned at all in the Pact’s Annex II, Declaration on Future Generations.

The Pact pledges to “Address the risks to sustaining peace posed by disinformation, misinformation, hate speech and content inciting harm, including content disseminated through digital platforms, while respecting the right to freedom of expression and to privacy and ensuring unhindered access to the Internet in accordance with international law, domestic legislation and national policies” (p. 15).

Objective 3 of the Digital Compact says, “We must urgently counter and address all forms of violence, including sexual and gender-based violence, which occurs through or is amplified by the use of technology, all forms of hate speech and discrimination, misinformation and disinformation, cyberbullying and child sexual exploitation and abuse. We will establish and maintain robust risk mitigation and redress measures that also protect privacy and freedom of expression” (p. 44).

The Compact also proposes to “Establish regular collaboration between national online safety institutions to exchange best practices and develop shared understandings of actions to protect privacy, freedom of expression and access to information while addressing harms.”

Nowhere do The Pact and its Annexes affirm that upholding communication rights, of which freedom of expression and opinion are a fundamental part, is vital to securing a “path to a brighter future for all of humanity, including those living in poverty and vulnerable situations” as mentioned in the preamble (p. 1).

And equally unfortunately, the documents are silent on the relationship between the Pact and the twenty-year review of the landmark World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+20), which takes place 7-11 July 2025. Many international non-governmental organisations and civil society organisations would like to know how the Pact for the Future informs and contributes to WSIS+20 outcomes.

As Global Partners Digital observes in its blog “Everything you need to know about the WSIS+20 Review” (19 November 2024), “For human rights defenders, it will be critical to ask what value the WSIS framework and its implementation has served in advancing (or not) human rights as the prerequisite for achieving the people-centred society envisaged by WSIS.”

The theme of Human Rights Day, “Our Rights, Our Future, Right Now”, cannot ignore – as the Pact for the Future appears to have done – the urgent need to address deficits in the global communications environment. Beyond key issues of accessibility, affordability, accountability, and compatibility, that would also mean tackling questions of ownership and control, media and press freedom, surveillance and censorship, as well as the weaponisation of misinformation, and disinformation.

After all, as WACC and its partners have underlined, “The ultimate goal of communication rights is to guarantee an environment of critical, competent, and creative interaction among individuals, as well as among diverse communities, cultures, ethnic groups, and nationalities, fostering peace and mutual understanding.” Exactly what one would expect of a Pact for the Future.

WSIS+20 may be the last chance to establish a lasting and meaningful rights-based framework for global communications which is effective and which enables all people everywhere to be seen and heard. A peaceful and just future depends on it.

Photo: https://www.ohchr.org/