ICT4Peace on ICTs and Human Rights Protection

ICT4Peace was invited by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHRs) to participate in the consultations on its Management Plan 2018-2021. The comments of ICT4Peace’s Sanjana Hattotuwa in response to the questions posed by OHCHR can be found here and are as the follows:



I. From your perspective what are the challenges and opportunities for positive human rights change in the current global context?
II. How do you see our comparative and collaborative advantage?
III. From your perspective, which thematic areas should OHCHR address as a priority in the coming four years to maximize its human rights impact?
On ICT4Peace’s cooperation with OHCHR
The IC4Peace Foundation’s substantive engagement with OHCHR’s Peace Mission Support and Rapid Response Section and the Methodology, Education and Training Sections since 2012 covered the following areas of work:
§  Critically observe and engage with developments in social and new media and secondly – given the increasing surveillance of human rights defenders and the myriad of ways through which ICTs can be used to spread hate, hurt and harm – how new tools can aid vital communications in fragile and violent contexts. (http://ict4peace.org/?p=3152http://ict4peace.org/?p=2722);
§  CVE and PVE, notably also around the protection of Freedom of Expression online (http://ict4peace.org/?p=4173);
§  The former UN SG’s Human Rights Up Front initiative, http://ict4peace.org/?p=3668, on how Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) could assist and strengthen a common operational framework, situational awareness and information exchange around human rights within the UN family, as well as bringing into the UN architectures information from the public domain – in line with the thrust of the UN HRUF initiative.

Sanjana, Hattotuwa, ICT4Peace Special Advisor, Geneva, 19 April 2017

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