Blog – Page 92 of 189 – Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA)

18Jun

Countering Nonconsensual Sharing of Intimate Images: How far do Uganda’s Laws Go?

admin June 18, 2020

By African Feminism |
In 2014, when Uganda introduced a law against pornography, few anticipated that it would largely be used to target and prosecute women, and specifically women whose intimate photos have been shared online without their consent. The Anti-Pornography Act, whose enforcement is spearheaded by a 9-member Pornography Control Committee is mandated to “apprehend and prosecute perpetrators of pornography, collect and destroy any pornographic materials and detect the sharing of nude materials on computers, phones and television.”
Pornography, according to the Act is “any representation through publication, exhibition, cinematography, indecent show, information technology or by whatever means, of a person engaged in real or stimulated explicit sexual activities or any representation of the sexual parts of a person for primarily sexual excitement.” The Act makes it a crime to produce, traffic in, publish, broadcast, import, export, sell or abet any form of pornography, and anyone found guilty of the offence faces a 10-year jail term.
It is on these grounds that over the years in Uganda, particularly women whose private images have been leaked on the internet without their consent have been arrested by police and tasked to explain how their photos ended up on the internet.
In 2018, a university student was arrested, charged in court and sent to prison for allegedly producing and broadcasting a pornographic video contrary to section 13(1) and (2) of the Anti-Pornography law.
In another famous case, Desire Luzinda, a renowned artiste was forced to make a public apology after the Minister of Ethics and Integrity issued threats to arrest her for engaging in pornography following leakage of her intimate photos on social media by an ex-boyfriend.
The sharing of private nude images, often by jilted lovers and hackers is used as a tool to shame women, blackmail them or extort money from them. Lindsey Kukunda, who runs the online platform Not Your Body, says it is worrying that the law focuses on punishing victims whose images have been leaked rather than the perpetrators of the crime.
“When it comes to non-consensual sharing of intimate images, the law has manipulated the situation so that women can be punished for being women. They don’t try to look for the men. It is always the women that they target,” Kukunda says.
She adds that in many of the documented cases, the photos are leaked to blackmail or extort money from the victims and had nothing to do with pornography. “The aim is often to cause distress and pain to the victims but the police make no effort to look for the blackmailer. It is easier for them to go for the woman than to carry out investigations and find the culprits who have leaked the images,” she adds.

With a focus on victims and many perpetrators getting away with their actions, this specific kind of online violence against women has been a growing trend in Uganda.

Gendered Impact Of The Anti-Pornography Law

A recently released research study by the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), looked at online safety for women. The findings show that despite having a lesser presence on the internet, more women are likely to face various forms of online violence compared to their male counterparts, further undermining their participation in online spaces.
Figures from the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) show that internet penetration currently stands at 38 per cent among the general population. In another study, the Web Foundation found that only 21 per cent of women compared to 61 per cent of men had accessed the internet in the six months prior to conducting the survey. Education and income levels played an important factor in women’s internet access, where women with some secondary school education are six times more likely to be online than those with primary and no education.
The CIPESA study under the Women At Web project involved interviews with university students, journalists, bloggers, activists, human rights defenders and business owners.
“The absence of laws designed to specifically address the various forms of digital violence such as ‘revenge pornography’, trolling and threats, and the lack of sufficient in-country reporting mechanisms exacerbate these challenges and often result in many women being forced to go offline or resorting to self-censorship,” the study reveals.
Ophelia Kemigisha, a human rights lawyer at Chapter Four Uganda, says what enforcers of the anti-pornography law are doing is simply policing women’s bodies. She says that the violence often meted against women online, as it is offline, has not been taken seriously. Instead, like violence offline, it is usually depicted as a simple misunderstanding between two parties.
“Unless we start to see non-consensual sharing of images of women as violence, we shall continue to see women victims being targeted instead of the perpetrators.”
The vagueness of the law further complicates its implementation. Recourse for Ugandan women, according to Kemigisha could be in the Sexual Offences Bill 2019, which is currently before Parliament. In the proposed law, it would be criminal for a person to send or transmit materials of a sexual nature, with violations attracting a fine or prison term of seven years or both.
By making it a sexual offence, victims would also be able to anonymously report cases without fear of being identified, something that is not possible under the current laws. Legislator Anna Adeke agrees. Cyber violence, she says, has a big gender aspect to it and so the laws must be sensitive as regards to gender because we all suffer differently on cyber platforms.

“Knowing that the media which occupies most of the cyberspace is a very patriarchal arm, it’s important that laws are gender appropriate so that we make it increasingly risky for people to abuse women online,” says Adeke.

Peace Oliver Amuge, from Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET), an organisation that supports women’s use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) says based on years of research on technology-related violence against women, for victims, one of the biggest challenges is the mechanism of where to report cases as the Police is often not competent enough to deal with cases.
Jimmy Haguma, the head of cybercrimes unit at the Uganda Police acknowledges that law enforcement officers are not well trained at investigating cases of digital crimes, especially those involving non-consensual sharing of private images.
“One of our biggest challenges in addressing online violence against women is where they can report cases to. The typical police station is not equipped with that. We are trying to devise online methods where people can report cases.”
Apprehending perpetrators, according to Haguma, has also been complicated by the fact cyber-related crimes against women, including the non-consensual sharing of their images, are often carried out by people using stolen phones.
“They use stolen phones to send text messages to their victims to send money through mobile money so that they don’t publish their images. If a person doesn’t make a call, then tracking such a person then becomes difficult,” he said.

New Initiatives Closing The Response Gaps

Without adequate avenues for victims to report cases, innovative platforms such as the Women At Web Portal that is currently under development hopes to fill the void and make it easy for women victims to report cases of violations online and safely. The portal is being spearheaded under the Women at Web project, an alliance of five organisations, including Chapter Four Uganda, the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), the Defenders Protection Initiative (DPI), Not Your Body and Unwanted Witness. The alliance is working to improve digital literacy and security among African women in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda.
Brian Byaruhanga from the Defenders Protection Initiative, which is spearheading the development of the portal says the intention is to be able to acquire evidence based on the violations that women are experiencing online, and also make it easy for victims to report cases anonymously and safely.
“The portal will help us in policy advocacy and improve the protection of women online. As it stands now, there is no proper documentation of these cases and yet for advocacy, you need the data,” says Byaruhanga.
The portal will also be used to generate information on the types of violations, where and how they are happening and which categories of women are most targeted. This data, according to Byaruhanga will subsequently be shared with law enforcement agencies such as the Police, to ease their investigations and therefore help victims hold perpetrators to account.
Kukunda from Not Your Body says women need to take lead in challenging social conventions for their own sake. “ Women have to rise above the illusion that being sexual is a sign of immorality. It is one of the reasons they feel ashamed to report even to their friends,” adding that public conversations about these issues is what will help improve awareness and acceptance of women as sexual beings not to be demonised for it.
Support is also paramount. While there are organisations that offer free legal advice to those who cannot afford lawyers, Kukunda says women need to take the initiative to study laws such as the Data Protection Act so they can take action into their own hands.
“Women should never go alone to report a case to a police station or be naive about the system. The system is not ready to help women, nor is it interested,” Kukunda adds.
In Malawi and Uganda, non-consensual sharing of private images has yet to be widely recognized and/or acknowledged as a gendered issue. Consequently, it remains below the radar of most activists and prominent gender advocates. Globally, however, there is growing recognition that digital technology such as email, the social media platforms and mobile phone technologies are being used as a tool to harass, intimidate, humiliate, coerce and blackmail.
This article was first published by the African Feminism on June 18, 2020.

17Jun

Coalition of Civil Society Groups Launches Tool to Track Responses to Disinformation in Sub Saharan Africa

admin June 17, 2020

Press Release |
Today, Global Partners Digital (GPD), ARTICLE 19, the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), PROTEGE QV and the Centre for Human Rights of the University of Pretoria jointly launched an interactive map to track and analyse disinformation laws, policies and patterns of enforcement across Sub-Saharan Africa.
The map offers a birds-eye view of trends in state responses to disinformation across the region, as well as in-depth analysis of the state of play in individual countries, using a bespoke framework to assess whether laws, policies and other state responses are human rights-respecting.
Developed against a backdrop of rapidly accelerating state action on COVID-19 related disinformation, the map is an open, iterative product. At the time of launch, it covers 31 countries (see below for the full list), with an aim to expand this in the coming months. All data, analysis and insight on the map has been generated by groups and actors based in Africa.

Countries currently covered by the map: Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

For further details, contact [email protected]
Quotes from groups:
Commenting on the launch, Article19 said: “Disinformation constitutes a major threat to the freedom of expression and the right to access information and it is geared to mislead the population and influence their opinions and views. The fight against disinformation requires a multifaceted approach ranging from education, awareness raising, proactive disclosure of public interest information, fact checking; independent regulation and effective self-regulation by legacy media and social media platforms among others. With the COVID19 pandemic, it is more important than ever that collective efforts are made to curb the impact of disinformation on public health and the rights of the public to know.”
“National legislation and policies aimed at countering and responding to disinformation should always strike the right balance between the need to protect people against this practice and the respect of human rights especially freedom of expression. Such measures should not be used to interfere or block divergent opinions and dissident voices. We are pleased to have been part of this joint initiative that has enabled us to work together with sister organisations in and outside the continent to publish this disinformation tracker.
This tracker is a start-up that will usher in more in-depth work analysing laws and policies around the disinformation phenomenon in the region, engaging media and civil society in analysis-based advocacy geared towards governments and intermediaries to protect human rights—particularly freedom of expression—in their disinformation response, to ensure any restriction and penalty are always justifiable, proportionate and compliant with international standards.”
The Centre for Human Rights said: “Disinformation is a global phenomenon whose effects are felt across the political, economic and social spectrum. Efforts being undertaken to counter the scourge of disinformation should respect human rights, especially freedom of expression. In addition, a sustained approach is required and should involve different stakeholders employing legal and other internationally set standards. The tracker is an attempt to showcase the nature of state regulation of disinformation in sub-saharan Africa and provides a basis for tackling this scourge.”
CIPESA said: “Speculation, false and misleading information circulating online is a challenge, not only in Africa but across the world. Legislative means against misinformation often undermine free speech and media. The tracker is a great resource for activists, to drive evidence based advocacy, policy engagement and litigation.”
GPD said: “Governments around the world have been grappling with how to respond to disinformation—a challenge given new urgency by the COVID-19 crisis. However, many of their responses pose real risks for freedom of expression. We hope that this tracker will support groups in the Africa region working to promote approaches to the disinformation challenge that protect fundamental human rights.”
PROTEGE QV said: “It is the responsibility of states to protect the security of their citizens, in the online space just as in the offline. Among threats to security online, disinformation has particular prominence, and can carry severe consequences. In seeking to tackle it, governments should balance the need to maintain security by promoting accurate information to citizens with the attendant risk of suppressing legitimate forms of expression. This tracker will serve as a key resource for groups working to ensure citizens have access to timely and accurate information.”

04Jun

African Internet Rights Alliance (AIRA) Denounces Restrictions on Freedoms in Kenya and Nigeria

admin June 4, 2020

Joint Letters |

The African Internet Rights Alliance (AIRA) has expressed deep concern about the use of cybercrimes legislation to restrict rights and freedoms in Kenya and Nigeria. In turn, the alliance has petitioned the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression to help redress the situation in the two countries.

AIRA has urged the two Special Rapporteurs to publicly call on the governments of Kenya and Nigeria to ensure that their cyber-crimes laws do not restrict fundamental rights and freedoms during the Covid-19 pandemic.

See letter to the African Special Rapporteur and to United Nations Rapporteur

The alliance raised concerns about Nigeria’s Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc) Act and Kenya’s Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act (or CMCA, 2018) – also known as the “fake news” law. For both countries, the alliance noted that during the Covid-19 period freedoms, particularly movement, access to courts, as well as economic and social rights, are being curtailed due to the extraordinary powers held by the governments.

In Kenya, concerns were raised on misinformation and Covid-19 as well as on cyber-harassment. An example is the vaguely worded cyber harassment provision under section 27 of the CMCA, 2018, which has granted the Kenyan government the power to prosecute people for voicing their concerns and opinions. This provision has the potential to lead to convictions for single and one-off, rather than repeated, communication(s).

Meanwhile, AIRA stated that Nigeria had taken a similar stance as Kenya where in the 2015 Cybercrimes law also includes the criminalisation of single incidents of “annoying communication”. According to the alliance, this is a threat to legitimate expression which has already had a chilling effect on civic space and digital rights in Nigeria.

The alliance recognises the need to combat economic crimes committed using digital technologies, as well as the need to curb misinformation during this public health pandemic. However, AIRA also noted that the cybercrimes laws in Kenya and Nigeria had created instruments which enable authorities to arbitrarily monitor and regulate the activities of internet users and to control free expression online, in the absence of adequate safeguards.

About AIRA: The Africa Internet Rights Alliance (AIRA) undertakes collective interventions and executes strategic campaigns that engage the government, private sector, media and civil society to institute and safeguard digital rights. The alliance is made up of nine civil society organisations based in countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, including Amnesty International, ARTICLE 19 Eastern Africa, BudgIT, the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT), the Co-Creation Hub (CcHub), the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), the Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet), the Legal Resource Centre (LRC) and Paradigm Initiative.

19May

CIPESA Joins Call Urging Burundi Gov't To #KeepItOn During Elections

admin May 19, 2020

Joint Letter |

The Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) has joined 30 international human rights advocacy groups of the #KeepItOn coalition in urging authorities in Burundi to ensure that the May 20, 2020 elections will be void of any network disruption of digital communications and to enable voters to freely elect their leaders.

The state of internet freedom in Burundi has been precarious due to the continued tightened control over independent media and critical online publishers by the government. See the 2019 report on the State of Internet Freedom in Burundi

The coalition has submitted a joint letter to the government of Burundi to ensure open, secure and stable access to the internet and social media platforms throughout the country’s presidential elections. The signatories appealed to the authorities in Burundi to consider the following recommendations to guarantee citizens’ active participation in the elections:

Ensure that the internet, including social media and other digital communication platforms, remains accessible throughout the elections
Ensure that the Agence de Régulation et de Contrôle des Télécommunications (ARCT) and the Conseil National de la Communication take all the necessary regulatory measures to ensure internet service providers (ISPs) inform people of any form of disruption or interference in the provision of internet access
Order the unblocking of all websites of independent media outlets that are currently inaccessible in the country

. Read the joint letter.

15May

Uganda's Social Media Tax Undermining Covid-19 Fight

admin May 15, 2020

By Juliet Nanfuka |

Globally, in the wake of the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID19), social media has played various roles, such as filling information vacuums and providing channels for citizens to demand accountability and transparency. In Uganda, the government and other agencies have utilised social media as one of the avenues for disseminating information to citizens, including providing status updates on confirmed cases, as well as running public health and safety campaigns.

However, the effectiveness of social media to reach a wider audience in Uganda has likely been undermined by the social media tax, which the finance ministry introduced in July 2018. The tax on so-called Over-the-Top (OTT) services requires telecom subscribers to pay a daily subscription in order to access popular social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Despite several requests to suspend the tax during the pandemic, the government has upheld it, thereby excluding segments of the population from easily accessing information and resources via the taxable platforms. Last month, the Speaker of Parliament joined the chorus of those urging the suspension of the tax so as to aid the fight against the pandemic. Her call rode on the revelation by the tax authority that the OTT tax had dismally failed to raise the revenue earlier anticipated, and admission from the minister for information and communications technology that the tax needed to be rethought.

Uganda’s internet penetration stands at 38%, but with research indicating that many subscribers have more than one internet subscription, the proportion of citizens that use the internet could be much lower than 38%. A key challenge is cost. An average Ugandan telecom subscriber spends UGX 10,500 (USD 2.8) per month on voice, SMS and data, yet access to social media for a month costs an additional USD 1.6 as OTT tax.

Indeed, multiple and high taxation on digitisation remains a stumbling block to increased inclusion not only to basic social media access but also for mobile money usage, digital banking, and access to public e-services.

While all forms of communication including radio, television and in some cases, loudspeakers are playing vital roles in keeping citizens informed on Covid-19, social media is providing a valuable channel for reporting public health gaps, encouraging transparency, accountability, clarification and case monitoring – yet its reach is limited by the OTT tax.

In the early stages of Uganda’s lockdown, it was through social media posts of academic and satirist, Dr. Spire Ssentongo, that many citizens learnt of the cracks in the states’ quarantine processes, such as the forced excessive accommodation prices for quarantined individuals, and the continued public operations of hotels that had been designated as gazetted quarantine centres. Many others also took to social media to share their experiences and the Ministry of Health was forced to respond to these concerns.

Meanwhile, opposition Member of Parliament Robert Kyaluganyi used his social media platform to launch an educative music video on the pandemic in March, and within 10 hours of its release it had garnered more than 700,000 views. He later tweeted that he had numerous requests for authorisation for the song to be played on television and radio stations.

At government level, some key ministries are struggling with the optimal utilisation of their social media platforms and basic information availability on their websites. For instance, the Ministry of Education and Sports website has no information related to how the education sector should cope with the pandemic. Instead, a series of tweets were made through the account of the ministry’s head, Janet Museveni, pointing to a PDF which details some measures the ministry is undertaking, none of which make any reference to the use of technology or have any indication of where the suggested educational content could be found online.

Yet some entities have showed how technology is aiding their efforts to combat Covid-19. Among them was a tweet by the Uganda Revenue Authority (@URAuganda) highlighting how investment in the Regional Cargo Tracking System (RCTS) had helped to intercept a truck driver who tested positive for Covid-19. The system was launched in 2017 to track goods under customs control from point of loading to a final destination within Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

Back in 2017, the government launched the Uganda Digital Vision, a national policy and strategic framework to guide the country’s digital transformation and provide a unified direction for ICT development. With the social media tax undermining access to digital information and services, and key ministries failing to leverage digital technologies in providing critical public services, the Digital Vision does not seem to be delivering well on its promises.

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