Rights and internet governance, was RE: [governance] Taking down a site [was: beijing ticket scam]

[Anriette Esterhuysen]

Hallo all

Lisa, you are correct in that the SA Human Rights Commission is the appropriate 
institution to deal with this. In fact they deal with hate speech issues quite often.

They are under-resourced, but they do do excellent work.  Here is their URL 
http://www.sahrc.org.za/sahrc_cms/publish/cat_index_26.shtml

Draft hate speech legislation has been before parlaiment a few times here in South 
Africa.  I am not sure what the status is. If I remember correctly the draft bill was badly 
not well conceived and very controversial. 

I certainly think that making a formal complaint to the HRC (human rights 
commission) would the way to start if the intension is to create public awareness of 
the issue.

It will also drive lots of traffic to the site.... which is less desirable.  Personally, Rui, I 
would just ignore it.

Lisa, I completely agree with you about the relationship between rights and internet 
governance. Sadly I think that we have lost ground since WSIS.  As you say there is a 
lot of work to be done to get beyond rights rhetoric and to work out what the 
implementable rights-based public policy principles are that we can work with on 
specific issues, e.g. those you mention, for example net-neutrality.  APC tries to adopt 
this approach in our access work.

I also think that the mainstream human rights movement has not engaged this terrain 
enough, altough there are exceptions. 

Anriette


Date sent:      	Wed, 6 Aug 2008 12:09:58 +0100
From:           	"Lisa Horner" <lisa at global-partners.co.uk>
To:             	<governance at lists.cpsr.org>,
	"Rui Correia" <correia.rui at gmail.com>
Subject:        	RE: [governance] Taking down a site [was: beijing ticket scam]
Send reply to:  	governance at lists.cpsr.org,"Lisa Horner" <lisa at global-
partners.co.uk>

> Echoing Ian, I wonder if it would be worth filing a complaint with the
> South African Human Rights Commission?  The SA bill of rights states
> that freedom of expression doesn't extend to "advocacy of hatred that
> is based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion, and that constitutes
> incitement to cause harm." Is this supported by any other legislation
> in SA?
> 
> So many of our discussions around internet governance issues can be
> approached from a rights perspective, but human rights lawyers and
> institutions are usually absent from the debate.  Human rights and
> their associated tools and mechanisms are arguably one of the only
> global governance institutions that is 'thickening' in the current age
> of 'globalisation'.  Human rights approaches also have an inbuilt
> framework for balancing out tensions between different rights and
> responsibilities.  However, there's still a lot of work to be done in
> bringing them up to date and ensuring that they're capable of dealing
> with new issues, including those relating to freedom of expression and
> the internet.  I wonder if engaging directly with national human
> rights institutions is one way of starting that process?
> 
> In a way, this is linked to Anriette's comment that many new campaigns
> around rights are a-historical.  Similarly, I think that they should
> be rooted in, or at least have a firm understanding of, existing human
> rights institutions, both formal and informal and at all scales. 
> We've just commissioned some research into how policy principles based
> around notions such as net neutrality, interoperability, universal
> access and content diversity can be rooted in the international human
> rights system which will hopefully yield some interesting insights...
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Thanks,
> Lisa 

------------------------------------------------------
Anriette Esterhuysen, Executive Director
Association for Progressive Communications
anriette at apc.org
http://www.apc.org
PO Box 29755, Melville, South Africa. 2109
Tel. 27 11 726 1692
Fax 27 11 726 1692

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