Promoting Effective and Inclusive ICT Policy in Africa

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  HomeCollaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA)  /  rights
10Dec

New Toolkit to Guide National Human Rights Institutions in Promoting Digital Rights

Author CIPESA Posted on

Edrine Wanyama |

In an increasingly digital world, safeguarding human rights requires innovative tools, robust mechanisms, and strategic collaboration. Recognising this need, the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), the Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), and Paradigm Initiative (PIN) have developed a groundbreaking Toolkit to strengthen the ability of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) in Africa to protect and promote human rights in the digital era. 


While emphasising the role of NHRIs in both promoting and protecting these rights, the Toolkit demystifies digital rights by providing their relationship with the traditionally known rights and demonstrating how digital rights violations can occur. 

The digital transformation sweeping across the globe has created new opportunities for citizens to communicate, express themselves, and claim their various rights. However, it has also ushered in unprecedented challenges, including online censorship, surveillance, misinformation, and violations of privacy. These digital threats disproportionately affect marginalised communities, activists, and human rights defenders, making the role of NHRIs more critical than ever.

The Toolkit equips NHRIs with the knowledge, tools, and strategies they need to effectively address these challenges. It emphasises the intersection of human rights with digital technologies and provides actionable insights to promote accountability, transparency, and inclusivity in digital governance.

The Toolkit highlights the various forms of digital rights violations  such as internet shutdowns, throttling, and blocking; content restrictions including filtering and takedown orders, onerous obligations on intermediaries, restrictive content moderation policies, and the widespread and unchecked digital surveillance.  

Among the roles that NHRIs should play are providing technical advice to government ministries, legislators, the judiciary, and other stakeholders to shape progressive laws, designing digital literacy curricula, and capacity and awareness building of the relevant institutions and stakeholders. Others are research on the impact of digital technologies, application of regional and international human rights approaches, and oversight over public sector procurement of digital technologies.

How NHRIs Can Protect Digital Rights

In the context of digital rights, NHRIs may:

  • Monitor proposed legislation with respect to its impact on digital rights and submit recommendations on how to ensure human rights compliance. 
  • Incorporate digital rights topics, such as online privacy rights violations and incidents of government ordered network disruptions, into annual reporting and submissions to UN mandate holders and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and other regional and international human rights monitoring processes. 
  • Connect with domestic and regional digital rights organisations to coordinate efforts to address digital rights violations.
  • Revise existing intake material to systematically receive complaints of digital rights violations
  • Ensure internal policies and methodologies for investigating, analysing, and reporting take into consideration the types of information, data, and tools needed to address digital rights violations
  • When supporting complainants and victims, provide resources and referrals for digital security best practices and capacity building so they can better protect themselves as they seek redress
  • Investigate digital rights violations and call for the necessary measures to end them and ensure non-recurrence.

The Toolkit also underscores the need for NHRIs to build their internal capacities to report and respond to digital rights violations, reporting and monitoring the implementation of laws, coordinating digital rights issues with regional and international institutions, and investigating digital rights violations to ensure that violations stop and justice is served. 

The Toolkit is an important resource that can be utilised to equip various stakeholders with knowledge to respond to emerging digital rights challenges and to identify viable solutions, such as monitoring, documenting and reporting, to enhance the promotion and protection of digital rights. As such, it could go a long way in helping to address common digital rights violations and leveraging resources and partnerships for the protection and promotion of digital rights in Africa.

14Mar

Towards an African Declaration on Internet Rights

Author admin Posted on

As internet usage continues to grow in Africa, so does the interest by governments to monitor users’ online activities. This has led to a clash between internet rights promoters and governments in some African countries.
On February 12–13, 2014, participants from several African civil society organisations involved in promoting human rights and internet rights convened in Johannesburg, South Africa to draft an African Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms. The meeting was organised by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) and Global Partners Digital in collaboration with the Media Rights Agenda, Media Foundation for West Africa and the Kenya Human Rights Commission.
Many countries justify their tough stance on internet freedom as necessary to fight cybercrime, promote peace and maintain national security. Whereas some of these policies and practices have been adopted by authoritarian regimes to retain power, others were in response to national crisis contexts such as hate speech and terrorism. Ultimately, the measures have often had chilling effects on access to information, freedom of expression, privacy and data protection.
Participants in this meeting called for the promotion of an open, free and accessible internet. Issues identified as the most crucial and still hindering internet growth in Africa that need immediate action were: improving access to internet including the development and promotion of localised multi-lingual content; addressing internet infrastructure obstacles; capacity building for users; and the need to create a balance between freedom of expression and privacy of users.
Others identified were data protection, addressing gender inequalities and gender-based violence against women online, and adopting supportive ICT policies that promote freedom of expression online and equitable access to information.
Due to increased internet freedom violation incidents coupled with regressive policies being made in many countries, the need for a well-defined Internet Intermediary Liability (ILL) regime has also become increasingly apparent. Another meeting held on February 10-11, 2014 organised by the APC with support from Google Africa discussed the responsibility that may be placed on intermediaries in implementing monitoring and control mechanisms laid down by the laws.
At the regional level, there are legal and regulatory frameworks like the Africa Charter on Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa, which provide limited protection for internet rights and the liability of internet intermediaries. It was noted that such frameworks could act as building blocks for individual countries to draw up best practices on ILL regimes.
There was consensus that such existing frameworks should be the basis for adopting a general guide with definitions of terms on Internet intermediary liability. This guide would act as central referencing document on which individual countries would base their national IIL regimes.
During the discussions, participants charted their thoughts on a best practice guide for an IIL regime for Africa by asking the below questions:
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While responding to these questions, participants recognised that intermediaries can play a crucial role in promoting Internet freedoms in Africa.
Meanwhile, the meeting also reviewed recent policy and practice developments in Uganda, Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria since the 2011 Intermediary Liability in Africa research. It identified a need to increase awareness among different stakeholder groups of the importance of clear regulatory frameworks for intermediary liability to secure rights on the internet; and for stronger collaboration to advocate for best practice internet intermediary regulatory measures in Africa.
The outcomes of both these meetings will form the basis for the draft civil society Africa Declaration on Internet Rights and Freedoms, which will be launched at the ninth global Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Istanbul, Turkey September 2-5, 2014. The declaration will be available for public input throughout the period leading up to IGF 2014.

08Aug

Kenyan Human Rights Networks Deploy ICT Platforms in their ICT4Democracy Work

Author admin Posted on

Two Human Rights Networks (HURINETS) working with the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) to improve grass roots based organisations’ and their memberships’ understanding of the commitment to building a human rights society have deployed a crowd map, blogs and social media tools to promote their work.

Laikipia HURINET located in Laikipia in the South Rift Region of Kenya works to empower the Laikipia County Community through promotion of human rights, free information dissemination, training, and networking. The HURINET, also known as the Vision Facilitators Network (VIFANET) in June launched https://laikipiacivicaction.crowdmap.com/.
Meanwhile, Kwale HURINET is documenting its work on child rights at www.genesisforhumanrights.wordpress.com. Kwale HURINET is located in Kwale on South Coast of Kenya. Their work focuses on civic education on the implementation of the Constitution of Kenya 2010 with special emphasis on the Bill of Rights, devolution, leadership and integrity among other constitutional provisions; para-legal services on child rights and labour; security, equality and justice.
Read the full report here.
This article was published on July 24, 2012, about the ICT4Democracy in East Africa project, which brings together various partners in the region – among them CIPESA.