[bestbits] Connectivity and human rights

[Stuart Hamilton]

Dear Brett

Please put IFLA down for helping out on this. We’re co-organising the DC on Public Access in Libraries in the IGF context, and had several representatives at the April meeting of Global Connect in DC. We continue to monitor it with interest. Let us know how to proceed!

Stuart

From: bestbits-request at lists.bestbits.net [mailto:bestbits-request at lists.bestbits.net] On Behalf Of Brett Solomon
Sent: 22 June 2016 14:47
To: &lt,bestbits at lists.bestbits.net&gt, <bestbits at lists.bestbits.net>
Cc: Deborah Brown <deborah at apc.org>; Carolina Rossini <crossini at publicknowledge.org>
Subject: [bestbits] Connectivity and human rights

Dear friends,

You might remember the two letters (here<http://bestbits.net/finance-ministers-global-connect/> and here<http://bestbits.net/global-connect-initiative/>) sent through Best Bits last September and in April of this year on the Global Connect Initiative.<https://share.america.gov/globalconnect/>
The overarching aim of the Global Connect is bring 1.5 billion people online by 2020.

The Initiative is progressing including a meeting that took place following the April letter between US Secretary of State and the President of the World Bank. Many Finance Ministers also participated in that event at the World Bank designed at financing Global Connect.
Despite the letters, the IEEE Report-out document that came out from the meeting, barely registered human rights, freedom of expression, privacy etc.
A few of us (Access Now, Public Knowledge and APC) have started to work on a set of HR-based principles to inform connectivity initiatives including Global Connect.

Given the renewed attention on connectivity, we see this as a good opportunity to develop a set of principles that addresses the human rights dimension of access, and that guide human rights as a foundation for rolling out connectivity - from participation of marginalized voices, to the nature of contractual arrangements, to protection of opinion online.
Right now much of the discussion is centering around outstanding connectivity issues being essentially an engineering problem. The risk of course, if human rights do not inform connectivity initiatives is the roll out of a censored, throttled, monitored, militarized internet and could deepen inequalities within societies.

We are using existing documents (eg WSIS+10 Outcome Document, Human Rights Council A/HRC/RES/26/13, Net Mundial, internet rights and principles charte<http://internetrightsandprinciples.org/site/charter/>r), APC Internet Rights Charter <https://www.apc.org/en/system/files/APC_charter_EN_0.pdf> to inform these principles.

We wanted to see if others in the community would be interested in working with us. And we are looking specifically for those who have experience in expanding access (including in providing access in under-served communities and building community-based networks) and network engineers and would like to support us in this effort with expertise.

Let us know if you're interested or if you have questions.
Hope all are well!

Brett

Brett Solomon
Executive Director
Access Now | accessnow.org<https://accessnow.org>

+1 917 969 6077<tel:%2B1%20917%20969%206077>
@solomonbrett
Key ID: 0x4EDC17EB
Fingerprint: C02C A886 B0FC 3A25 FF9F ECE8 FCDF BA23 4EDC 17EB

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