UN to drill journalists on digital security
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Regional Office for Southern Africa (OHCHR ROSA) is organising a sub-regional workshop for journalists in Southern Africa aimed at facilitating experience sharing, skills and capacity development on human rights and digital security based on international norms and standards.
According to the organisers, the overall purpose of the workshop is to strengthen the capacity of journalists in Southern Africa on the risks and threats in the digital space and the practical measures to safeguard safe participation in digital space including engagement with human rights mechanisms in undertaking their work.
By the end of the workshop, participants are expected to be able to gain a deeper understanding of: Cyber security, the security risks associated with their actions, and identify cyber attacks and other risks they may encounter in their work. They are to also know practical tools for various cyber and information security protection measures and procedures. Participants are also expected to grasp avenues for advocacy, as well as be able to seek redress and remedies at international, regional and national levels where infringements on human rights occur.
OHCHR has also launched the Human Rights 75 Initiative to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) that will be celebrated on 10 December 2023.
Ahead of this milestone celebration, Human Rights 75 is expected to rekindle the spirit, impulse, and vitality of the UDHR and renew a worldwide consensus on human rights and showcase the UDHR by focusing on its legacy, relevance, and activism.
As part of the initiative, the month of May is dedicated to shining a spotlight on issues of civic space and people’s participation with the aim of demonstrating that civic space is the red thread that connects practically all UDHR articles/human rights issues, as well as the UN’s peace and development pillars. It will also shed light on the inspiring work of the broad range of human rights defenders, including journalists and youth activists among others, as well as the multi-faceted risks they face.
In his Call to Action for Human Rights, the United Nations Secretary General emphasized that digital technologies have opened up new frontiers, providing new means to advocate for, defend and exercise rights. He added that they have enabled groundbreaking investigative reporting, new models of cross-border collaboration, cooperative fact-checking with audiences and access to treasure troves of data and diverse sources with a mouse-click.
However, at the same time, they have also given rise to unprecedented challenges and changes for the news industry, aggravating existing threats and creating new ones. The challenges are multiple, complex and often interconnected. Longstanding problems of violent attacks on and legal harassment of journalists with impunity, censorship of content and manipulation of regulatory authorities have been entrenched, aggravated and augmented by digital technology.
New manifestations include gender-based online violence, targeted surveillance of journalists, legislation restricting information online, “media capture” by State or corporate interests and viral disinformation campaigns that undermine public trust in independent journalism.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also moved more civic space activity online and transformed ways in which media houses are operating. At the same time, the pandemic has deepened discrimination and inequality, made human rights defenders, including journalists, more vulnerable to surveillance and cyber attacks. It has also resulted in new restrictions on freedom of expression and access to information online.
These attacks compromise the work of journalists and threaten fundamental rights and freedoms online and offline. Protecting sources of confidential information is at the heart of journalism. The right to privacy is a fundamental right, which enhances the work of journalists and ensures access to fact-based and reliable information.
The infringement of this right often results in people increasingly becoming reluctant to share information with journalists for fear of reprisals, especially on political and sensitive issues, and this undermines the right to information and ultimately impedes the effectiveness of a free, independent and diverse media to play its traditional role as a public watchdog seeking to hold authorities accountable.
A free, independent and diverse media also fulfils society’s right to know, as well as journalists’ right to seek, receive and impart information. It has been acknowledged as a key pillar of democracy and sustainable development in numerous General Assembly and Human Rights Council resolutions.
The Internet has also become the new battleground in the struggle for women’s rights, amplifying the opportunities for women to access information and express themselves but also creating new risks of repression and inequality.
Female journalists are exposed to gender-specific risks in the form of technology-facilitated gender-based violence and harassment, online public shaming (including body shaming), invasion of privacy and sharing of personal and intimate images of victims, and threats among others. The nature of the violations committed against female journalists is often a manifestation of broader discrimination and gender inequality within a society/ country.
In Southern Africa, there’s increasing surveillance and monitoring of online activity by both state and non-state actors. Such monitoring activities often target persons expressing dissenting views or exposing human rights violations, which often includes journalists and other human rights defenders.
Laws – from defamation to censorship – have been used to punish journalists and suppress media freedom. It is commendable that domestic courts in Zambia and Zimbabwe have found criminal defamation laws to be unconstitutional and unjustified in modern democratic societies.
Several states in the sub-region have also adopted different pieces of legislation to regulate the online space such as anti-terrorism, cyber security, data protection laws and ‘fake news’ laws.
However, some of these legislations contains overly broad regulations and practices that fail to meet international human rights standards on promotion and protection of the rights to privacy, to freedom of expression and information, and to freedom of peaceful assembly and association or the right to right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers. Nearly all states in the sub-region have ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and by implication these states are bound by the provisions of the ICCPR.
The United Nations General Assembly and Human Rights Council has emphasized that ensuring respect for and protection of the right to privacy, recognized in article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 17 of the ICCPR and in many other international and regional human rights instruments can play a central role in managing new digital threats to human rights, which are inextricably linked to the personal data that powers the engines of digitized societies.