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	When a state shuts down the internet, both people and economies suffer by OHCHR, Human Rights Watch, agencies   Sep. 2023   2030 Agenda will fail without full respect for the right to information. (OHCHR)   Without universal and meaningful connectivity for all, the right to information is an empty promise for billions of people around the world, said Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression. Ahead of the International Day for Universal Access to Information, the expert issued the following statement:   “The Internet is not equally available or accessible to all and that is deepening existing inequalities and creating new inequities along lines of gender, geography, ethnicity, income and digital literacy, increasing the vulnerabilities of those most marginalised in society.   Noting that this year’s International Day for Universal Access to Information focuses on online spaces, I call on States to strengthen their efforts to close the digital divide and remove all barriers to the right to information.   The right to information is ‘the oxygen’ without which neither democracy nor development can flourish.   By enabling people to be better informed and better equipped to participate in decision-making, access to information, online and offline, improves the quality and sustainability of development outcomes. By empowering citizens, civil society and the media to hold governments and companies to account, it makes democracy more meaningful.   As my report shows, the good news is that many States have adopted laws on access to information and some even recognise access to the Internet as a legal right, but the bad news is that these laws often are not implemented effectively, and various tactics are used to restrict or deny access to information, online and offline, to investigative journalists, human rights defenders and other civil society actors.   In more than 74 countries over the past five years, Governments have shut down or slowed down the Internet, or blocked mobile communications for intermittent or prolonged periods, affecting access to information and disrupting health, education and other essential services.   Information, freedom of expression and active participation, online and offline, of youth, civil society and independent media are vital, whether to tackle global challenges, such as climate change and pandemics or to break age-old patterns of discrimination, exclusion and violence.   Universal and affordable access to the Internet and access to information are both clear targets of the Sustainable Development Goals. I urge all States to translate the commitments they made recently at the High-Level Summit on Sustainable Development into concrete action.”   http://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2023/09/2030-agenda-will-fail-without-full-respect-right-information-un-expert   Sep. 2022   Spyware and surveillance: Threats to privacy and human rights growing, UN report warns. (OHCHR)   People’s right to privacy is coming under ever greater pressure from the use of modern networked digital technologies whose features make them formidable tools for surveillance, control and oppression, a new UN report has warned. This makes it all the more essential that these technologies are reined in by effective regulation based on international human rights law and standards.   The report – the latest on privacy in the digital age by the UN Human Rights Office* – looks at three key areas: the abuse of intrusive hacking tools (“spyware”) by State authorities; the key role of robust encryption methods in protecting human rights online; and the impacts of widespread digital monitoring of public spaces, both offline and online.   The report details how surveillance tools such as the “Pegasus” software can turn most smartphones into “24-hour surveillance devices”, allowing the “intruder” access not only to everything on our mobiles but also weaponizing them to spy on our lives.   “While purportedly being deployed for combating terrorism and crime, such spyware tools have often been used for illegitimate reasons, including to clamp down on critical or dissenting views and on those who express them, including journalists, opposition political figures and human rights defenders,” the report states.   Urgent steps are needed to address the spread of spyware, the report flags, reiterating the call for a moratorium on the use and sale of hacking tools until adequate safeguards to protect human rights are in place. Authorities should only electronically intrude on a personal device as a last resort “to prevent or investigate a specific act amounting to a serious threat to national security or a specific serious crime,” it says.   Encryption is a key enabler of privacy and human rights in the digital space, yet it is being undermined. The report calls on States to avoid taking steps that could weaken encryption, including mandating so-called backdoors that give access to people’s encrypted data or employing systematic screening of people’s devices, known as client-side scanning.   The report also raises the alarm about the growing surveillance of public spaces. Previous practical limitations on the scope of surveillance have been swept away by large-scale automated collection and analysis of data, as well as new digitized identity systems and extensive biometric databases that greatly facilitate the breadth of such surveillance measures.   New technologies have also enabled the systematic monitoring of what people are saying online, including through collecting and analysing social media posts.   Governments often fail to adequately inform the public about their surveillance activities, and even where surveillance tools are initially rolled out for legitimate goals, they can easily be repurposed, often serving ends for which they were not originally intended.   The report emphasises that States should limit public surveillance measures to those “strictly necessary and proportionate”, focused on specific locations and time. The duration of data storage should similarly be limited. There is also an immediate need to restrict the use of biometric recognition systems in public spaces.   All States should also act immediately to put in place robust export control regimes for surveillance technologies that pose serious risks to human rights. They should also ensure human rights impact assessments are carried out that take into account what the technologies in question are capable of, as well as the situation in the recipient country.   “Digital technologies bring enormous benefits to societies. But pervasive surveillance comes at a high cost, undermining rights and choking the development of vibrant, pluralistic democracies,” said Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights Nada Al-Nashif.   “In short, the right to privacy is more at risk than ever before,” she stressed. “This is why action is needed and needed now.”   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/09/spyware-and-surveillance-threats-privacy-and-human-rights-growing-un-report   June 2022   Internet shutdowns: UN report details ‘dramatic’ impact on people’s lives and human rights. (OHCHR)   The dramatic real-life effects of Internet shutdowns on people’s lives and human rights have been vastly underestimated, the UN Human Rights Office warns in a new report issued today. The report urges States not to impose Internet shutdowns.   “Too often, major communication channels or entire communication networks are slowed down or blocked,” the report says, adding that this has deprived “thousands or even millions of people of their only means of reaching loved ones, continuing their work or participating in political debates or decisions.”   The report aims to shed much-needed light on the phenomenon of Internet shutdowns, looking at when and why they are imposed and examining how they undermine a range of human rights, first and foremost the right to freedom of expression.   Shutdowns can mean a complete block on Internet connectivity but governments also increasingly resort to banning access to major communication platforms and throttling bandwidth and limiting mobile services to 2G transfer speeds, making it hard, for example, to share and watch videos or live picture broadcasts.   The report notes that the #KeepItOn coalition, which monitors shutdowns episodes across the world, documented 931 shutdowns between 2016 and 2021 in 74 countries, with some countries blocking communications repeatedly and over long periods of ti   “Shutdowns are powerful markers of sharply deteriorating human rights situations,” the report highlights. Over the past decade, they have tended to be imposed during heightened political tensions, with at least 225 shutdowns recorded during public demonstrations relating to social, political or economic grievances.   Shutdowns were also reported when governments carried out security operations, severely restricting human rights monitoring and reporting. In the context of armed conflicts and during mass demonstrations, the fact that people could not communicate and promptly report abuses seems to have contributed to further insecurity and violence, including serious human rights violations.   Collecting information about shutdowns is difficult as many governments refuse to acknowledge having ordered any interference in communications and sometimes put pressure on companies to prevent them from sharing information on communication being blocked or slowed down.   “The official justification for the shutdowns was unknown in 228 shutdowns reported by civil society across 55 countries,” the report states.   When authorities do recognize having ordered disruptions, justifications often point to public safety, containing the spread of incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, or combatting disinformation. Yet, the report describes how shutdowns often achieve the exact opposite, furthering fear and confusion, and stoking risks of division and conflict.   Internet shutdowns also carry major economic costs for all sectors, disrupting for example financial transactions, commerce and industry. Economic shocks provoked by shutdowns are felt over long periods of time, greatly exacerbating pre-existing social and economic inequalities.   “Shutdowns effectively deepen digital divides between and within countries,” the report warns. At a time when substantial development aid is justifiably directed towards enhancing connectivity in less developed countries, some of the beneficiaries of that assistance are themselves deepening the digital divide through shutdowns. At least 27 of the 46 least developed countries have implemented shutdowns between 2016 and 2021, most of which have received support to increase connectivity.   The report urges States to refrain from imposing shutdowns, to maximize Internet access and remove the multiple obstacles standing in the way of communication. The report also urges companies to speedily share information on disruptions and ensure that they take all possible lawful measures to prevent shutdowns they have been asked to implement.   “Internet shutdowns have emerged as the digital world has become ever more important, indeed essential, for the realization of many human rights. Switching off the Internet causes incalculable damage, both in material and human rights terms,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet.   “When a state shuts down the internet, both people and economies suffer. The costs to jobs, education, health and political participation virtually always exceed any hoped for benefit.”   “What this report clearly highlights is that swift action is needed to end Internet shutdowns, including through more prominent reporting of their impacts, more transparency by involved companies, and ensuring that we all defend connectivity from self-imposed disruptions,” the High Commissioner added.   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/06/internet-shutdowns-un-report-details-dramatic-impact-peoples-lives-and-human http://www.accessnow.org/to-defend-democracy-stand-up-for-civil-society/ http://www.accessnow.org/press-release/africa-middle-east-internet-shutdowns/ http://www.accessnow.org/internet-shutdowns-2022/ http://www.accessnow.org/campaign/keepiton/ http://starvationaccountability.org/news-and-events/digital-feast-and-famine-digital-technologies-and-humanitarian-law-in-food-security-starvation-and-famine-risk/   May 2022   EdTech Exposed: Students not Products, by Human Rights Watch, agencies   Governments harm Children’s Rights in Online Learning - 146 Authorized Products surveilled Children and harvested Personal Data.   Governments of 49 of the world’s most populous countries harmed children’s rights by endorsing online learning products during Covid-19 school closures without adequately protecting children’s privacy, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.   The report was released simultaneously with publications by media organizations around the world that had early access to the Human Rights Watch findings and engaged in an independent collaborative investigation.   “‘How Dare They Peep into My Private Life?’: Children’s Rights Violations by Governments that Endorsed Online Learning during the Covid-19 Pandemic,” is grounded in technical and policy analysis conducted by Human Rights Watch on 164 education technology (EdTech) products endorsed by 49 countries. It includes an examination of 290 companies found to have collected, processed, or received children’s data since March 2021, and calls on governments to adopt modern child data protection laws to protect children online.   “Children should be safe in school, whether that’s in person or online,” said Hye Jung Han, children’s rights and technology researcher and advocate at Human Rights Watch. “By failing to ensure that their recommended online learning products protected children and their data, governments flung open the door for companies to surveil children online, outside school hours, and deep into their private lives.”   Of the 164 EdTech products reviewed, 146 (89 percent) appeared to engage in data practices that risked or infringed on children’s rights. These products monitored or had the capacity to monitor children, in most cases secretly and without the consent of children or their parents, in many cases harvesting personal data such as who they are, where they are, what they do in the classroom, who their family and friends are, and what kind of device their families could afford for them to use.   Most online learning platforms examined installed tracking technologies that trailed children outside of their virtual classrooms and across the internet, over time. Some invisibly tagged and fingerprinted children in ways that were impossible to avoid or erase – even if children, their parents, and teachers had been aware and had the desire to do so – without destroying the device.   Most online learning platforms sent or granted access to children’s data to advertising technology (AdTech) companies. In doing so, some EdTech products targeted children with behavioral advertising. By using children’s data – extracted from educational settings – to target them with personalized content and advertisements that follow them across the internet, these companies not only distorted children’s online experiences, but also risked influencing their opinions and beliefs at a time in their lives when they are at high risk of manipulative interference.   Many more EdTech products sent children’s data to AdTech companies that specialize in behavioral advertising or whose algorithms determine what children see online.   With the exception of Morocco, all governments reviewed in this report endorsed at least one EdTech product that risked or undermined children’s rights. Most EdTech products were offered to governments at no direct financial cost. By endorsing and enabling the wide adoption of EdTech products, governments offloaded the true costs of providing online education onto children, who were unknowingly forced to pay for their learning with their rights to privacy and access to information, and potentially their freedom of thought.   Few governments checked whether the EdTech they rapidly endorsed or procured for schools were safe for children to use. As a result, children whose families could afford to access the internet, or who made hard sacrifices to do so, were exposed to the privacy practices of the EdTech products they were told or required to use during Covid-19 school closures.   Many governments put at risk or violated children’s rights directly. Of the 42 governments that provided online education to children by building and offering their own EdTech products for use during the pandemic, 39 governments made products that handled children’s personal data in ways that risked or infringed on their rights.   Some governments made it compulsory for students and teachers to use their EdTech product, subjecting them to the risks of misuse or exploitation of their data, and making it impossible for children to protect themselves by opting for alternatives to access their education.   Children, parents, and teachers were largely kept in the dark about these data surveillance practices. Human Rights Watch found that the data surveillance took place in virtual classrooms and educational settings where children could not reasonably object to such surveillance.   Most EdTech companies did not allow students to decline to be tracked; most of this monitoring happened secretly, without the child’s knowledge or consent. In most instances, it was impossible for children to opt out of such surveillance and data collection without opting out of compulsory education and giving up on formal learning during the pandemic.   As more children spend increasing amounts of their childhood online, their reliance on the connected world and digital services that enable their education will likely continue long after the end of the pandemic.   Governments should pass and enforce modern child data protection laws that provide safeguards around the collection, processing, and use of children’s data. Companies should immediately stop collecting, processing, and sharing children’s data in ways that risk or infringe on their rights.   Human Rights Watch has launched a global campaign, #StudentsNotProducts, which brings together parents, teachers, children, and allies to support this call and demand protections for children online.   “Children shouldn’t be compelled to give up their privacy and other rights in order to learn,” Han said. “Governments should urgently adopt and enforce modern child data protection laws to stop the surveillance of children by actors who don’t have children’s best interests at heart.”   http://www.hrw.org/news/2022/05/25/governments-harm-childrens-rights-online-learning Visit the related web page
	Framing the problem of hunger and conflict at the UN Security Council by Michael Fakhri Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food   Organized violence and armed conflict remain the principal causes of food insecurity. But when I was asked to brief the Security Council in April, in my capacity as UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, my main goal was not to call the Security Council into action. Putting aside the legitimacy of the Security Council as currently structured, my main concern was that the food crisis was being framed in very narrow terms in New York. I instead focused on re-framing the issue so that the Security Council and the large number of General Assembly Members in attendance had a broader and systemic understanding of the food crisis.   In 2018, when the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2417 (2018), it was the first time the Security Council recognized the intrinsic link between hunger and conflict and condemned the use of starvation as a method of warfare, emphasizing that it may constitute a war crime. Through this resolution, the Council has empowered itself to act in situations where hunger and armed conflict are reinforcing each other in a deadly feedback loop.   To understand the importance of this resolution, it helps to go back to when the term “food security” was first introduced in the 1970s. It was used to highlight, at the highest political level, the importance of food’s connection to peace. Third World countries wanted to create a World Food Security Council akin to the UN Security Council. The Third World may have also used the term “security” to respond to direct threats from people like US Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz who in the mid-1970s admitted to using food and hunger for geopolitical gains when he famously stated, “Food is a weapon. It is now one of the principal tools in our negotiating kit.”   What Happened at the Security Council   Not surprisingly, there was a divide over the cause of the world food crisis. Western countries focused on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and some suggested that it was the principal cause of the global food crisis.   There is no doubt in my mind that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is wrong, and that Russia is responsible for the death and displacement of millions of civilians. I thus noted that Russia should end the war immediately and unconditionally.   The Russian invasion of Ukraine is one of the most recent global shocks to food systems, but it is not the cause. Rates of hunger and the risk of famine were on the rise before the COVID-19 pandemic and made even worse during the pandemic.   Some European delegates went so far to say (or imply) that an attack against Ukraine is an attack against the global food system. I advised against this line of thinking for two reasons. First, it suggests that if a country is not a principal exporter of a major food stuff, then the Security Council would consider it less of a priority to intervene and end an invasion or occupation. Second, if we have learned anything from the pandemic it is that all food systems are inherently interconnected; an invasion or occupation of any place is an attack on the global food system.   While the US and EU and their allies point to the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the cause of the current food crisis, the Russian Federation and their allies disagree and point to how unilateral coercive measures generate hunger and famine and disrupt food systems around the world. The Russian position has significant merit. Some of the same countries chastising Russia are countries implicated in the blockade against Yemen that has led to famine and the starvation of tens of thousands of children since 2015. Today, over 2 million children in Yemen are suffering from acute malnutrition.   In sum, despite this disagreement, both perspectives regarding hunger and conflict generally have been true. But neither side goes far enough in their food systems analysis. For instance, it is true that the Russian invasion of Ukraine disrupted global markets, and that prices are skyrocketing. How prices responded to the war also tells us that markets are part of the problem.   Markets are amplifying shocks and not absorbing them. I noted two things Member States could focus on to better understand why markets are causing more harm. First, the fact that a significant number of countries and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) relied on just 1 or 2 countries for a major food stuff like wheat tells us that the trade system does not work the way it should. Moreover, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been at a standstill over agriculture negotiations and food security for over 25 years. There were some developments at the recent WTO Ministerial Conference since countries successfully negotiated several ministerial declarations on food security and the pandemic. However, these declarations have mostly been about process and lacked substance.   Second, food prices are soaring not because of a problem with supply and demand as such; it is because of price speculation in commodity futures markets. Global prices have been drastically fluctuating for the past two years partly because commodity markets in the United States were deregulated in 2000 (through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act).   The other issue some delegates raised is the disruption of the supply of fertilizer caused by the war in Ukraine. For example, Belarus has been keen to export its fertilizer. I agree that in the immediate term, countries and suppliers should do what they can to ensure that farmers get access to fertilizer. But reliance on chemical fertilizers is the ultimate problem. Chemical fertilizer may sometimes boost production in the short term, nevertheless in the long term it will deplete the soil and harm the environment in effect violating people’s rights to life, food, and a healthy environment. There are a host of techniques that allow farmers to grow enough food without depending on chemical inputs, much less imported chemical inputs.   What is to be Done?   The question I rhetorically asked the Security Council was: Why is it only after the Russian invasion of Ukraine that there has been this degree of political focus on the food crisis that started in 2020? My answer was that we have all failed. Every UN agency, every regional body, every government has failed.   In the past 60 years, hunger and famine has not been caused by inadequate amounts of food. Hunger and famine, like conflicts, are always the result of political failures. Governments and international institutions have failed to listen to the most vulnerable communities and respond to their demands. Governments and international institutions have failed to cooperate and coordinate. This is why we are facing the threat of more famine and more armed conflict.   The fact that only now is there some semblance of a global response to the food crisis reveals what is at stake. This is the moment in which international institutions’ legitimacy and national governments’ ability to maintain security is threatened.   The current food crisis, like the pandemic at large (as I explain in my most recent report), is driven by an international failure to cooperate and coordinate. For example, under the auspices of the Secretary General, a Food Systems Summit was held in September 2021. There we saw a global commitment to help every single country transform their food system to eliminate hunger, famine, and malnutrition, within the context of climate change and biodiversity loss. And yet, the Summit organizers consciously left out the pandemic and the food crisis, essentially wasting most people’s time.   Resolution 2417 can be a powerful tool because it recognizes that hunger is a cause and effect of armed conflict. It is powerful because it warns against using food as a weapon. It requires the Secretary General to report regularly to the Security Council, and there have been debates over how to make these reports more frequent and robust to trigger action. It might be the case, however, that when reports arrive regarding hunger and conflict it is too late to prevent the death spiral.   To address the issue of hunger and conflict, one must address the underlying causes of the food crisis. Corporate-led food systems around the world are increasing inequality and creating systems of dependency. As food prices skyrocket, many countries are faced with the impossible choice of either feeding people or servicing debt.   Using public funds to ensure that people have access to adequate food can cause a government to fall into arrears, worsening financial shocks; servicing debt instead leads to more hunger and malnutrition. The international economic and financial architecture treats food as a commodity and has not served people’s real food security needs. All while climate change continues to disrupt food systems and governments dither.   Only a global right to food plan will eliminate hunger, and therefore eliminate one of the causes of violence and armed conflict. As I detail in my July report to the General Assembly, the easiest first step is to extend pandemic-era policies that have proven to strengthen the realization of the right to food and convert them into permanent programs. Long term change will have to begin with increasing biodiversity, ensuring a just transition for workers, enacting land rights and genuine agrarian reform, and curtailing corporate power.   * July report: The right to food and the coronavirus disease pandemic:   http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a77177-right-food-and-covid-19-pandemic-interim-report-special http://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-food/annual-thematic-reports   * Michael Fakhri is the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. He is also a Professor at the University of Oregon School of Law where he teaches international law, commercial law, and food and agriculture law.   http://www.justsecurity.org/83173/framing-the-problem-of-hunger-and-conflict-at-the-un-security-council/ http://theconversation.com/starving-civilians-is-an-ancient-military-tactic-but-today-its-a-war-crime-in-ukraine-yemen-tigray-and-elsewhere-184297 Visit the related web page
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