The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> ALAN FINLAY: Welcome to day two. There are a couple of new people in the room. So should we do a round of introductions, maybe starting on your right.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Alan, can we give a bit of background. How many people were not at the workshop yesterday? Can we do a little bit of a background so we are all starting in the same place and do you want to shut your mic off? Thanks. So my name is Anriette Esterhuysen, communications, Alan Finlay, APC New York, the coordinator of this project, and just, we started the workshop yesterday. There is an echo here. It's horrible. But just to give people a bit of a background, APC has been working on Human Rights on the Internet for quite a long time. In that work, we came to observe that most of the discussions on Human Rights on the Internet have focused on civil and political rights. We felt that that led to all kinds of constraints and gaps and political challenges including a lack of or including a difficulty in really building a movement from the Global South and a north/south solidarity movement, exclusion of developing country Governments who feel that they are being criticized for lack of political, civil rights and while there were lots of gains resulting from this work on Human Rights on the Internet, we felt that the gains were also being offset by some of these gaps.
And the whole principle, the whole notion of rights is that different types of rights are indivisible, and the reason we are working on Human Rights on the Internet in the first place is to arrive at more social justice to feel that the Internet has potential for driving social justice and development has been met. We have had research papers and case studies looking at economic, cultural and social rights. We have worked on the right to education, right to science, to access and participate in science. We have looked at cultural rights in the context of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigning Names and Numbers.
And Alan, what else ‑‑ patents?
>> ALAN FINLAY: That's right. Education, so we pulled together these papers looking at how the Internet can support economic, social, cultural rights, but what we also discovered is that there are also harmful impacts, and that the Internet can limit rights particularly when it comes to the right to work. The Internet has been a contributor to job losses, for example.
So that's the background to this project, and we are trying to explore what is the relationship between the Internet and economic, social and cultural rights. Can we be using existing Human Rights mechanisms at a global, national and regional level to make them aware of economic, social and cultural rights on the Internet in order to influence policy and practice?
So and just the main output of this research will be published or has been published. I don't know, Flavia, if you have a copy, Global Society Watch, which is a report that APC produces every here. And there are how many countries? 45 country reports and various thematic reports that explores this issue.
And so this workshop is made up of people who were either part of that Global Information Society Watch or the research project as well as APC members. So thanks for joining us. We covered a lot of ground yesterday. And Alan will give you a little bit of a recap and then we are going to plunge into the rest of the workshop which we want to finish by lunchtime.
>> ALAN FINLAY: Thanks. The recap is quite difficult because it was, there were lots of issues that emerged. One of the main issues that emerged was APC is quite interested in the Human Rights mechanisms, but there are also social justice formations outside of that who don't necessarily work within the Human Rights framework. So there was this idea that how does APC work with those groups and how can those groups perhaps leverage some of the findings that APC has discovered in the project. So we covered a lot of territory. We looked at Human Rights mechanisms, we looked at competing ideas around ECRs and one that stuck out in my mind is big data and the new terrain of algorithms.
And also the ECR framework shows that the Internet can have a negative impact on rights, which in different ways to which the civil and political right framework shows. So that was an interesting issue that emerged from yesterday for me. There were various other discussions. I don't know if anyone else at the workshop wants to mention what stood up for them.
>> AVRI DORIA: Avri Doria speaking, and yesterday I kept my mouth shut most of the time because I was mostly listening. The thing that struck out at me most was something very simple that for me was one of those Da moments, why hadn't I realized that before, and it was on the notion of freedom of expression and its relation to ESC and perhaps you mentioned this while I wasn't quite paying attention. But it really, what are, except for those of us that are somewhat freaky about Internet Governance and freedom of expression where we want freedom of expression to talk about freedom of expression that most people want freedom of expression to talk about the ESC problems they are having.
And, you know, I have always been one of those that, yes, I have accepted that they are all interconnected and they all affect each other, and that was one of the truisms that I truly accepted, but hearing that yesterday, and hearing it put as simply as it was yesterday was one of the eye openers for me of the day that just was, made the whole day pretty much worth it for me.
>> ALAN FINLAY: Lea, do you want to mention something that stuck out for you yesterday? Sean?
>> SEAN SIOCHRU: I did enjoy the discussion on the strategy at the strategic level around the World Summit on the Information Society, the GIS campaign and stuff like that because there are very few occasions when we get to talk at the strategic level, and to kind of give our experience honestly and say what, you know, how Human Rights fit in of the different kinds of Human Rights fit in in terms of what you can say, what you can't say, how the terminology is changing these days for paining, how the entire political environment is shifting and how people who are utterly committed to human rights and the universality of Human Rights have to address new audiences in new ways.
And I think that was a very useful discussion and one hopefully we will be continuing on. In other words, what do Human Rights mean and how can you use them now? And particularly the economic, social and cultural rights.
>> LEA SHAVER: Okay. So I think similar to Victoria, my name is Lea, I'm Lea Shaver. The simple point that struck me as the profound take away was that we are looking for ways for the Internet to support the realization of economic and social and cultural rights, and especially that it's not about some ‑‑ I think in some reports and things there has been talk about, oh, the Internet is going to allow Government to deliver services better, you know, the Government will have a more efficient housing interaction, et cetera. And the point that stood out to me is the relationship is reverse. It had the people demanding and holding accountable and fighting corruption and drawing attention to gaps in delivery and all of these sorts of things.
And so the question for social justice advocates and Civil Society is how can the Internet be leveraged to help people demand and promote their own economic, social and cultural rights?
>> ALAN FINLAY: Thanks. So I'm Alan Finlay, the project coordinator for and Internet project for APC. Sean, do you want to ‑‑
>> SEAN SIOCHRU: Sean Siochru from Nexus Research Cooperative in Dublin.
>> FLAVIA FASCENDINI: Flavia Fascendini from LAAI, Latin American Information Agency in Ecuador.
>> ALAN FINLAY: You are doing the remote participation. Just introduce yourself.
>> (Off microphone).
>> I'm Dia. I work with APC.
>> LEA SHAVER: I'm Lea Shaver. I'm a professor at Indiana University.
>> FLAVIA FASCENDINI: Okay. I'm Flavia, APC communications manager.
>> AVRI DORIA: I'm Avri Doria, independent researcher but also involved with APC in various ways.
>> IROEL SANCHEZ: I'm Iroel Sanchez from Cuba.
>> ALAN FINLAY: I'm sorry, I didn't hear?
>> IROEL SANCHEZ: From Cuba.
>> ALAN FINLAY: And the name?
>> IROEL SANCHEZ: Iroel Sanchez.
>> ANITA GURUMURTHY: I'm Anita, I'm from IT for Change, an NGO in Bangalore.
>> RAQUEL GATTO: Raquel Gatto, Internet Society.
>> GRACE GITHAIGA: Hi, I'm Grace Githaiga, Kenya ICT Action Network.
>> Rahia Steward IDRC Ottawa.
>> International Development Research Centre I'm Rahia's side kick.
>> Hello, everyone, my name is Jung Woo of UNESCO as a friend of APC and also working on Internet freedom, Internet Governance so it's very interesting to know more about the appetite for APC in this area. Thank you.
>> DAVID SOUTER: David Souter, independent writer and researcher on Information Society and working on APC on the design of a training course around this theme.
>> I come from University of Spain and also from NGO that is here which is an APC member.
>> Good morning, Chad, APC, I come from the Philippines.
>> JAC SM KEE: Jac sm Kee, APC for Malaysia.
>> VALENTIA PELIZZER: Valentia Pelizzer.
>> REBECCA MACKENNON: Rebecca MacKennon Ranking Digital Rights.
>> ILANA ULLMAN: Ilana Ullman also Ranking Digital Rights.
>> My name is Isil from Cuba.
>> ALAN FINLAY: Thanks, everyone, could we put the agenda back up? Thank you. While they are doing that, yesterday's session was a kind of an interaction session. It was about presentations and talking and trying to get, understand the different issues of people that we hadn't engaged on this project. And we presented a lot of findings for this project, but today is more interactive Working Group session.
And we are waiting for the agenda to come up so I can talk you through it. It's, it ends at 1:30 so we are working now from ‑‑ it's 10 to 11:00 so for the next hour and a half we are going to break into groups. There is going to be group work. So there is the agenda on the screen. So essentially we have got, I have got four groups. We want to relook ‑‑ yesterday we spoke briefly at the end of the day about key research needs moving forward, key advocacy needs moving forward and key networks, institutions and organisations for engagement moving forward, capacity building we will do under point 2.
So if we look at some of the things that came up yesterday, I think it was a partial sort of brain storming. And advocacy we had issues of language, so the Human Rights language versus social justice language and where resonance can be found. There were issues of conceptualization of ECR off line networks own the Internet. Sustainability Development Agenda and critique of that in links to ECRs. Big data and algorithms, advocacy run that. We felt the research was done for that and it had to be translated into an advocacy program. Labor and tech, we probably would want to focus more on the right to work rather than labor. Anri made the point that labor rights are more strongly represented in the political rights framework.
Localization verses autonomy about how to reclaim private spaces and as well as with GIS Watch you will see each country reported action steps. And we need to do the job of synthesizing those into meaningful sort of cross regional or different space kind of advocacy needs, but that's something that we could do, that, of course, APC could be doing. And research, we were looking at new and emerging issues, algorithms again. Issues of health and autonomy were mentioned that's around big data rather than around, you know, eHealth initiatives.
It's more around the big data initiatives. Labor and technology, equality on the Internet, research gaps and action steps and the networks we had new and emerging issues, algorithms in big data, ECR networks not working on Internet issues. We see still a lot of work to be done in identifying that. There was mention the global alliance of the transnational corporation on HR, was that Sally's point? I'm not really familiar with that, the global alliance. What was the full name for the global alliance? I think it was your point.
>> Global alliance for the Transnational Corporation and Human Rights.
>> ALAN FINLAY: Right, so that was, that got mentioned, and then leaking, oh, there was this idea around project idea around doing an ECR survey in the way David Souter did it previously. So those were the emerging issues, but we want to actually throw this completely open for the research groups. What we want to say is under the framework of, I'm sorry, I keep taking the agenda down which is annoying, but what I want to say is under the framework of the HR mechanisms and the social justice movements, bearing those two points in mind, we want to have, we want to break into groups that deal with what are the advocacy needs going forward, the research needs going forward and the networking needs going forward and we will do that for an hour. Fine? Yes.
So these groups would basically ‑‑
>> Maybe a bit less.
>> ALAN FINLAY: 45 minutes. Okay, we will do it 45 minutes. And groups I think should self‑select, so based on that, we need. David Souter is going to lead the research group. This is David here.
>> SEAN SIOCHRU: Yes, I don't mind doing it, but one thing I wanted to ask is what you want to get out of each of the groups, but maybe you are coming to that? (Speaking off microphone).
(Audio technical difficulties).
>> So the third component is research, and there we are trying to get from the breakout group today a sense of what are the research needs? What research would be useful? And I think I would say that based on the discussion yesterday and the research we have done already, there clearly is a need to look at the negative impacts. I think we don't necessarily as rights advocates, we always focus on the positive potential of the Internet. I think we don't necessarily have a good understanding of what in fact are the negative impacts on economic, social and cultural rights that are resulting from increased proliferation of the Internet.
But the research could also be more practical, more positive. We can look at the Sustainable Development Goals, and is there a research, are there research needs that are emerging from the SDG process? Do we have the right indicators we need to look at whether the Internet is effectively, and whether the Internet policy is effectively maximizing the potential for achieving economic, social and cultural rights. So, Sean, I think we are trying to get a little bit of an agenda out of this.
Is there a need for follow‑up work? What kind of follow‑up work? And network building, I know there are people in the room who are organising an Internet Social Forum or trying to organize an Internet Social Forum next year which wants to look broadly at social justice in the Internet, and maybe that's also part of this economic, social and cultural rights agenda. The other thing we are particularly interested in, and I think maybe the advocacy group can focus on that, but possibly also some of the other groups, is using existing mechanisms, existing Human Rights mechanisms such as the Universal Periodic Reviews, such as the treaty body, the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Treaty which reviews countries and looks at the extent to which they are upholding their duty to not violate and promote Human Rights.
Is there actually work we can do there focused on economic, social and cultural rights? So it really is quite open, and I think we have a wide variety, we have people here working on linguistic cultural issues. We have people working on community networks and access at community level, and I think you should all feel quite free to put those issues into those three clusters, research, advocacy, and networking.
And then when we come back, we would like you to just report possible actions and priorities. Time frame, I think we are really looking at a one to three‑year type scenario. So that's also fairly open‑ended. And then, Alan, what will we do after that? How will we close the process?
>> ALAN FINLAY: So it's 11:00 now, we have 45 minutes, we will come and have a 15 minute report back from the people from each of the groups to get the ideas out there. And then we are going to go through a second process, which is, which will be plenary discussions around reviewing APC's Internet Rights Charter, around capacity building needs which David will lead and Lea is leading with Anri's support Internet Rights Charter and based on discussions we have we will brainstorm communications needs and Flavia will lead that.
The issue is simple, we have to some money to spend and we have come up with various ideas, but we are not convinced that they are meeting the needs of the future advocacy needs so we want your input into some ideas around infographics or videos that we can use to create communication materials that would be useful.
And I will just add something more. One of the topics we discussed yesterday is the private sector, and how challenging it is to hold the private sector accountable. So I'm very pleased that we have the Ranking Digital Rights team because that's what they have been working on. So that would be, so that, just, I didn't mention that in the summary, Rebecca and Ilana, but that came up yesterday and we discussed that quite extensively, particularly with the transnational corporations but not only. And that's why the discussion about, and what are the tools? Do we need a treaty? Do we need more bottom up monitoring? Or a combination? And so your input would be very valuable around that topic.
>> LEA SHAVER: Can I just interject before we break into the groups, I created a Google document for us to take notes and the link so you can all get into that and put your group's notes and fix the way that I misspelled your name and add your organizational affiliation, HTTP://tiny URL/APC2016IGF. So tiny URL.com/APC2016IGF and we can all crowd source the notes.
>> ALAN FINLAY: Thanks very much, Lea. We need an advocacy lead for the advocacy group. I would, I think I should roam. So anyone want to take it? So Sean is network, David is research. Advocacy? Any volunteers? Who is a good advocacy person? Guya, Guya is also APC and she will take advocacy. Right, and I think the groups can decide, I mean, where they want to congregate basically.
>> AUDIENCE: What are the options?
>> ALAN FINLAY: There is here, there is outside, and I'm not sure. There is a mixture, there is four chairs or something. So, David, where would you like to be?
>> Let's just look at who will perform best in the cold and extreme conditions. So maybe the advocacy, the advocacy is all about constraints and overcoming constraints and challenges. So the advocacy people will go outside. And research and network. So networking outside, research and advocacy inside. Advocate.
>> ALAN FINLAY: And back at 11:45.
>> ALAN FINLAY: Hi, everyone, perhaps we should get into the next rapping session. Thank you. I think if we can just do a brief summary report back from each group. That will be good so we get an idea what was talked about.
>> SEAN SIOCHRU: I'm hoping that the other groups are having the same difficulty I'm having to summarize in a coherent way. We had a very good discussion and it was broadly on topic. It's just extremely hard to summarize. Particularly in the context which we want which is around actions and priorities, but we began from the point that us here as Internet activists, but also Human Rights activists, so on, as a group we feel we have information about how the Internet has potential drawbacks, but they are mainly concerned with other issues, and the main point about the Internet is very simple. They want it to work for them. They want it to do what they want it to do. And that's the big issue as far as they are concerned.
So going to them and whether they are activists in environmental areas or in health areas or even practitioners in those areas and telling them and lecturing them about the dangers of what's happening with the Internet and of the long‑term implications is not going to get you very far, certainly and certainly it's the wrong approach. So we talked about a number of principles, if you like, that you have to adopt, that you have to go start from where people are at and not from where you are at. So, for instance, if somebody is telling you that something is working for them and they want it to work better, that's the starting point.
You don't tell them they shouldn't be using that because they are taking data from you, and it's been aggregated to a higher level and it will come back and hit them in ten years' time in the sector when they find out they can't do what they want to do anymore. That's not the approach you take.
You have to go and start where they are at. So the process of networking with groups like that has to be a process of mutual learning. And whether the activists on one side are learning from the activists and the practitioners on the other side, so in that respect there were a few examples given. For instance, Chad was talking about how FMA, an NGO in the Philippines is conducting a Forum, running a series of Forums which is drawing together people from different sectors for the sectors to understand what they are doing with the Internet but also to inform them and to have debates about where the Internet is going and how if it is affecting them now. Now, Chad can correct me on this, and I would welcome the others to come in.
So that is a way essentially of going out with a message, but to bring together different sectors and try to begin a debate within the sectors and with them. Another one is an example of going to the, what is it, the commission on women's, Commission on the Status of Women in New York, an event there where a number of people from APC, I think, went and prepared a number of very short one or two‑page pieces, about ten of them, on relating to different aspects of gender and of women's reality and so on relating it to the Internet and raising some of the issues as discussion pieces. And that then essentially kind of seeded a lot of ideas both within the event but also using tools of the Internet to be able to link those who were not at the event outside of the event and those more broadly involved.
So it is a way of going, you could make a similar argument with an environmental Conference or any other event where they are going to where they are at and you are trying to relate, you are trying to develop arguments that they can begin to pick up on. A third one was just an interesting discussion that we had about whether ICT for D as a sector still exists. 20 years ago or 25 years ago when we were starting out, the whole effort was to try and within the health area or within agriculture, within these different areas, particularly in the developing context to introduce ICTs in positive ways. In many ways that has been done. And you have ICT practitioners within those sectors.
And the issue that we were raising was those practitioners who are now in a sense established and these are, this is the traditional way of almost ICT. Those are people who might be at a good point to start networking among themselves, among the different sectors, say, between health, agriculture, so on, because those are people who understand the issue of ICTs, who understand the issues within the sectors themselves, and who would certainly be open to understanding the longer term implications and the meta level if you like implications of what's happening.
We discussed an awful lot more. I don't want to take up too much time. Does anyone want to mention anything else? Okay. That's it.
>> ALAN FINLAY: Thanks, Sean. David, would you? You don't want to give a brief.
>> LEA SHAVER: So I volunteered to be the rapporteur for our report and we had a very long ranging discussion and the notes are in the Google Doc. But to summarize it in three themes, first, why do we want research, second, points for how we conduct research and, last, what our research might focus on. So under the heading of why do we want research, some points we emphasized are to connect policies and practices with their real impact on individuals so that Governments and companies that are setting up those can sort of understand what the impact is. To produce evidence and evaluate impact, to advance conceptual frameworks and vocabulary, to promote clarity and shared understanding, to build connections among movements and to derive shared principles. Those are why we want research.
In terms of how we want to do this research, some points we emphasized were the importance of being respectful of what is already being done on the ground level and locally, to be consciously political and thinking about who is this research going to help and that requires paying great attention to inequality and power dynamics not just between north versus south countries, but within countries who is privileged and who is disadvantaged.
We were interested in action research, so research that leads to findings that can be implemented by Civil Society groups or research that Governments can translate into policy. We also emphasize because things change so fast when talking about Internet and its impact on society these days that we need fast, timely research because in three to five years it will be moot.
We need things that can happen in three months and get continually renewed. We talked about from the perspective of the right to science and culture that we emphasized open participatory research and that being research methods and that being a priority for us. We talked about heights based assessments as a way to framework the APC might be doing. We talked about wanting to respond to the current global political crisis and to try not to take a specific right to try to focus on in so many different contexts but to take a concrete theme that cuts across different rights and we have examples of that within our potential topics of focus.
For example, one topic that emerged as interesting is the shift to datafication, moving from a society where data is collected and analyzed only when you specifically authorize it, understanding what the purposes are for. To a society where the default is data is always collected and analyzed in unpredictable ways. What is the impact on Human Rights? Another specific theme that may be deserving of focus inquiry is the platform economy and the impact on economic, social and cultural rights ranging from the right to work to non‑discrimination, et cetera.
The impact of the Internet on cultural and linguistic minorities, and that may be a theme that needs a little bit more specification still, but that was something that we were interested in as a way to focus this. And perhaps the most specific idea we had was supporting national groups to do shadow reports to the Committee on economic, social and cultural rights, and I think the group was probably enthusiastic about all of these ideas. It was hard for us to have a clear priority among them yet.
>> ALAN FINLAY: Thanks, Lea. On the advocacy group, I mean, I think there were two kind of principles, one was that we also, the idea came out that you had to engage with organisations to create a conversation, but ‑‑ what was the other principle? I'm sorry. It's gone out of my head.
At any rate, there was a couple of ‑‑ oh, the second principle was that rather than saying with advocacy let's look at open data, you look at different Forums and spaces where these issues all collectively emerge. So that I found quite useful. So the first one was the one we have mentioned, the open‑ended intergovernmental Working Group on TNCs, which is a space where we need to bring Human Rights understandings to the analysis of business.
>> ALAN FINLAY: So the point about that is that there is a Civil Society coalition called the Treaty Alliance of the Global Movement for Binding Treaty of about a thousand organisations and that's where people could engage around issues. The second one is the SDGs and IFLA is, where is Stuart? IFLA is leading the process around evaluating the SDGs. They have worked on creating an indicator around right of access to information. This is moving down to the country level, and there will be a country, the country organisations, organisations IR IFLA is working with will then call for coalitions. And that's a place where APC could engage at the member level or other organisations.
W3C was mentioned as a process where we could look at open data advocacy. It would be a good place to advocate around that. The ISF was another space that was mentioned, the Internet Social Forum where the political implications of Internet policy could be unpacked. That's phrases like algorithmic Governments come out. The free media Forum, the Grogan is another. So some points we emphasized is how do we connect. Should we move to the charters, Anriette? What do you think?
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Comments around this? So we are nearing the end now of the process. So there are three more things that we wanted to ask you about, am I right? And when we first designed this project, you know, we approached this in the way we have approached other projects in the past. So we looked at what capacity building needs are important to take this work further. One thing we have learned in APC is if you don't know what it is you are doing, you are not very good at doing it. And this whole world of Human Rights is actually so full of technical archaic institutions and we talked about the power of the broad framing.
You don't necessarily always need the specific framing, but if you are doing advocacy and if you are trying to hold particular Governments or corporations accountable, it can actually help to understand what the mechanisms are. So one question that we would like to, we would like to share our thinking so far and then get your input on what type of capacity building would be helpful to help this ESCR work forward.
The second area is what information and communication products and processes are helpful? What tools do we need? Do we need story telling? Do we need infographics? What can be helpful? And the third thing would be monitoring frameworks, charters. Now, we have worked at APC with the APC Internet Rights Charter. We have developed in Africa the African Declaration. We have developed feminist principles on the Internet. So we use these frameworks as a way of building awareness, building movement, getting more people to understand what the issues are.
It's a way of framing the discussion, but they can also be useful as monitoring frameworks. So that was the third question, is there a need? Do the existing frameworks and charters that we have on Human Rights and the Internet address the economic, social, cultural rights issue sufficiently or do we need to do some adaptation around that? I think that's ‑‑ so we wanted to just, and we can do it quite briefly. Alan, how do you want to do it, one by one and then have some feedback and then we will close and you are all free to go and join the IGF party.
>> ALAN FINLAY: David, it would be good to give David a few minutes to talk about the model. Let's do capacity building first and then we can do the charters and then we will end up with information and communication products.
>> DAVID SOUTER: Okay. So this is what I was asked to do by APC was to do a draft day‑long course on economic, social and cultural rights. And I think, Alan, you did circulate to some people, but maybe not to others, I don't know, one is an introductory text handout and the other is a slide show. It would be possible, probably, to run the slide show up there, but I think probably not worth it.
So I will take something about its aims and then coverage and structure in a few minutes. So the aim of the course, I think it stems from a series of other courses which were done for APC about four years ago. I think one of which covered the international rights regime in general, one covered freedom of expression and information, one covered association and peace in assembly and one covered privacy. So they are existing modules.
They were based around the idea of having a day or most of a day with some material being presented but also quite a lot of opportunities for discussion of the implications for people in the room. And the people in the room would be different depending on the event. So the aim of this particular one was to follow that model, have call document which sought to clarify what the international rights regime says about economic, social and cultural rights, relate those rights to the SDGs, and then provide space for discussion around case studies and around ways in which the rights mechanisms could be used.
Focus on people who are interested in the relationship between ICT and ESC rights to three particular groups, rights, advocates, and activists, ICT and Internet activists, development advocates and activists, those three groups who all have different views. There are a set of core assumptions so ESC rights are important on their own terms. They are not secondary. They are not subordinate to civil and political rights, that they are linked to the Sustainable Development Agenda or to development and thereby to the Sustainable Development Agenda, that ICTs and the Internet are having a major impact on the underlying parameters for economic and social and cultural development which aren't about projects being implemented by development agencies, it's about the way people are adapting to the way they behave, so systematic change in societies, that the impact of ICTs on rights can be positive, negative, neutral or a mixture of both and almost always a mixture of both.
And, therefore, focus on how to maximize the positive and minimize the negatives. And issues of equality are fundamental to the economic, social and cultural rights covenant. So in the course itself, my suggestion is to focus on three or four of the rights. The ones that I have chosen in the draft are employment, because there is a lot of negatives around it, and also actually because I think the employment rights that are express in the covenant are very based around post‑war European social Democratic norms and rather than much less organized labor markets of Developing Countries. So I think there is a lot to explore there. Education because it has powerful links across other areas, culture because there are lots of different issues you can discuss around culture. The fourth is equality because it's cross cutting.
And I will add materials on the right to development and regional rights. The structure, the idea is to have most of a day, so there is lecture material, but it's broken up throughout the day with Q and A sessions, but also the small group discussions around case studies and around practical adoption, practical use of the rights, instruments, and the sort of case studies one would be thinking of. Uber in the case of employment, open educational resources, and MOOCs in the case of education, whether issues of cultural dominance raised as well as access to education.
Also real rights for culture, the rights for equality, but they could vary. The questions that are arising are those that Anriette mentions, and whose capacity are we trying to build? What's the best way of doing that? Will a model like this work? Will it be useful? What's missing from it? How would we assess whether we are being useful in a capacity building initiative? And obviously you haven't, we won't have time to discuss it today, but I will welcome comments from those of you who Alan has sent it to.
>> ALAN FINLAY: I think if people who did receive the original email group, if they could take time to review it and send some comments, it would be really helpful for David. But in general, I mean, do people have any ideas around the capacity building needs in the different spaces they are working in to promote the intersection between the Internet for cultural, social and economic growth?
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I saw the material so I have some comments. I'm not sure if you have seen my comments to David already. I sent it like two weeks ago. David, I think it's very good. I think you need to put more emphasis on what happens at the regional and national level.
So I think looking at, for example, how in some countries, the ECRs, I think you have mentioned all of those, but I think maybe develop that more, how they can find their way into a Constitution, for example, and also where there are regional mechanisms, how the regional mechanisms can deal with that, and this will vary from region to region, so you will have to customize the material, but I think that it's useful to do that.
And then under case studies, it's no longer a very new case study, but I think it's quite an interesting one, would be access to medicines, looking at the whole retro viral story, because it's an ESCR campaign that involved intellectual property issues, it involved regulation, it involved relationship between government and business. We looked at that right at the beginning, actually, when we started the project. And we never developed it further, but it stood out as a case study. Particularly this would be, I mean, particularly Brazil, India, South Africa, those are the three countries where the experiences are quite well documented.
>> AUDIENCE: (Speaking off microphone). So my question was whether when looking at capacity building and, of course, I haven't seen the modules so I don't know, whether it would be better to tailor it specifically to health and Internet and target groups working on health rights, and then education and Internet, and then target groups working on educational rights,.
And the case studies, of course, then can relate to what those specific rights are because even for me, just listening to ESCR rights as a cluster, I'm not sure what exactly we are trying to get at. I mean, if we are at a very, if we are at a very structural level of just trying to get recognition for Internet in the ESCR space, then I think that's fine, especially at the international level, but if we are talking about national implementation, I wonder if it would serve us better to look at specific rights.
>> STUART HAMILTON: Stuart Hamilton, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions or IFLA. We did touch on the SDGs and as a general capacity building measure we have produced a learning module on what exactly they are, why they are important for access to information, and I think that could be thrown in here as a base resource for people who want to understand that area. That will be available either through me directly or online in the next month or so just as a useful baseline.
>> DAVID SOUTER: Has anyone else developed capacity building materials around social economic growth generally? I suppose it would be generally.
>> ALAN FINLAY: I just had a question. It relates to you mentioned briefly the kind of evaluation, how you can assess whether or not you have been successful in the capacity building which is notoriously difficult in that kind of stuff, what are you trying to build in to do that so you can get feedback as to whether it is effective and so on?
>> LEA SHAVER: I was responding to the other resources. I produce a ton of things I use with students that I use educationally and I can recommend things that might fit into this.
>> DAVID SOUTER: The reason for doing something on ESC general apart from the fact that that's what APC asked me to do, but the reason for doing it in general is I think these are illustrative of a conversation I had the other day with somebody who has done a lot of work over many years on the Internet, you know, prominent in the area, and essentially the conversation was around, you know, was around this, and his view was essentially that these weren't real rights. The real rights were civil and political rights. These were, you know, they were an expansion of what rights were, rights language was being used on, and they weren't proper.
And that's the reason for focusing on economic, social and cultural rights as a group. It's to make it clear that these are important rights which are related to now communities and societies work individuals exist between the communities and societies. So that's the reason for folks for ESCR rights in general. There is a strong case for doing things around individual areas so my own view as someone who works in both the ICT area and in general development is that I would always, my starting point for doing something around health in development would be development. It wouldn't be rights.
And similarly with education. I would start from the experience of 50 years of development experience, its successes and failures, and I would introduce rights as an element in that discussion, but it wouldn't be my starting point. In terms of the feedback, APC has its ways of doing this, does it not?
So I would supply APC, APC has ways of doing this which are establishing successes and failures of activities and there are evaluation progresses and those are what we would use. From my point of view, that was a question. It wasn't something I paid attention to coming to an answer with.
And with Anriette's point, we absolutely need to take those, and I think with something like this, I think we have learned from the other modules the extent to which you need specific tailoring. So what you can do with something like this is provide a framework and then you have got to rely on having people with sufficient expertise to then take that and reformulate it for the specific audience that's concerned, whether that's subject oriented or nationally oriented.
>> ALAN FINLAY: Okay. Thanks, David. I think we should move to the next ‑‑ so the next part of the discussion and if Anriette could lead it together with Lea is you have these charters and managing frameworks, principles, et cetera, charters that exist. The idea is that we take the Internet rights, APC Internet Rights Charter and we update it with more content specifically for the ESCR Convention. So would we like to pose a question around that?
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I don't have much, just to say that the idea of charters, I mean, they are twofold. The one is that they are a good tool for people who are developing them because if you develop a charter you have to understand the issues that you are talking about.
So as the people who worked on the feminist principles on the Internet would say, so we have an existing APC Internet Rights Charter. There are other charters, and some are national. There is a Brazilian, the CGI, the Internet steering group statement of principles. So the question is economic and social and cultural rights. The existing charter, the existing APC charter looks at the universal declaration. Now some economic, social and cultural rights are in the universal declaration and it interprets those from an Internet perspective.
So the question that we have, is it necessary to do that with economic social and cultural rights and is it possible because economic, social and cultural rights covers such a vast area? I'm glad that Guy Berger from UNESCO has joined us because they are also developing on principles, they have developed principles and they are looking at developing indicators.
We have asked Lea Shaver who is a Human Rights lawyer that worked on the second edition of the APC Internet Rights Charter. Lea, I don't know if you have given this thought? Is it necessary? Will it help? Is it possible?
>> LEA SHAVER: I was told I was going to come here and you guys were going to give me the answers. No, I think, you know, obviously within the universal declaration we have economic and social, cultural rights there. I think what, in some ways what I bring is a strong understanding of the economic, social and cultural rights generally.
What I probably need from the group is more of how these relate to the issues that you see, the issues that you work on around the Internet. And that is something that I'm already picking up bits and pieces of from today's event and yesterday's event, but I don't know if methodologically‑wise it is helpful ‑‑ we don't have a copy of that charter that we can put up on a board and look at it right now. Maybe we could have the list of the economic and social, cultural rights that are in the UDHR and people could flag current topics especially that might have missed the earlier version.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: We don't have time to dwell on that, but I would think the reason why it could be worth doing it is precisely what David Souter just said a few minutes ago, which is that many people don't see economic, social and cultural rights as real rights. And that's actually, I think, true. That's been our experience as well. They look at civil and political rights, freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom from torture.
They think of those as being the Human Rights, and maybe that is why it could be useful to integrate into our existing charter stronger reference to economic, social and cultural rights, to treat them at the same level and to give them equal status. But I don't have any more answers and I don't know, if no one else has anything to comment on that, we can move on, but there is a hand behind.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: I think we need to do more work in this area as being proposed. The whole idea of economic, social and cultural rights is that this is an evolving space. Political and civil rights are generally considered more frozen. They are basic to, you know, societies coming together. But economic, social and cultural rights depend on the state of civilization, the state of society, and they have always been expanding. So we need to do this work.
But I still think it's not just enough to interpret the existing rights instruments in terms of what the digital means now because I even say in some of the writings we do that these are industrial age rights. If we look at, for example, right to work and organize in the economic and social rights instruments, they are focused on industrial work organisation, but also the schooling nature and we tend to say that institutions are changing basically.
So the kind of changes which are taking place require new kind of rights, and if I could just say that what are our rights about data? Who owns our data as individuals, as groups? Who can get economic benefit out of it? These are economic and social rights of data which cannot be extrapolated from any piece of existing social economic rights Internet. What are the resources vis‑a‑vis platforms which organizes all of the digital activity in that platform?
So what are our default rights? What are our rights with algorithms that are taking decisions? These are the works which are new. I'm saying that first we do need to interpret the existing instruments in terms of the digital age development, but we also have a whole new set of rights and this area is always known to be an expanding area where new areas and new rights are listed and we should be doing work on these new rights that don't come from the existing instruments as such.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you, Anriette, and congratulations on the initiative. It's very interesting. I wanted to raise a different approach to it which I think might add to the way you set it out. So some people here may know that UNESCO has adopted four principles for the Internet which are rights, openness, accessibility, multi‑stakeholder, ROAM. So this is a kind of heuristic that you use when you are approaching Internet Governance things, to say how does this package work out.
Because each one obviously is interdependent on the other one. Now, if you look at classic Human Rights and the civic rights you could say that no right is more important than the other. That's, of course, standard, but there is also an acknowledgment you can limit rights in interest of other rights. So you can limit expression and interest of reputation and you can limit the right to information in the interest of privacy and so on.
So this is quite an interesting question because it's not about prioritization, but it is about how do you deal with different rights? So some rights are more enabling than other rights but nevertheless there is always the question of how do you balance them? And I think with the economic and social rights it does become practical in a policy point of view as to which economic and social rights in practice would attract more policy attention and not just from a development point of view. If you approach this from an Internet centric point of view, then I think you start coming into quite interesting questions because as we know when you are going to balance rights with other rights, you have to say is it necessary? Is it proportionate? Is it for legitimate purpose so you maintain the instance of the right as much as possible even if you are going to limit the interest of other rights.
What I think is critical from approaching from the Internet point of view is you are not just talking about balancing, you are talking about balancing vis‑a‑vis the Internet, and the Internet as we know is a very fragile and kind of accidental history in a way. But if you are balancing is going to impact on the degree of openness and the degree of accessibility and the degree of multi‑stakeholder participation, this is a particular critical thing to consider if you are talking about the Internet because you are not just speaking about balancing all of these rights in the broad sense, you know, for all social policies. From an Internet Governance point of view how do you balance rights on the Internet? That's where you have to not only use these classic tests of proportionality, but you have to say what does that mean in terms of openness? What does it mean in terms of accessibility? And what's the value add of multi‑stakeholderism?
I'm trying to say you could take this UNESCO model of rights and cover all rights, but even then when you are trying to see how the rights stack up against each other because you have the Internet, you have got to say how do they stack up vis‑a‑vis ROAM.
>> LEA SHAVER: Can you tell us where require balancing in the Internet context?
>> AUDIENCE: I gave right of information versus right to privacy or right to expression versus right to reputation, but you could say right to equality and right to culture because some culture as we know does not give rights of equality to women, for example. So there is often this question of how do you deal with different rights when you try and respect the essence of rights, and when you are making decisions about, for example, maybe decisions to policy, decisions that might impact on support for local content on the Internet or policy decisions that would impact on combating misogyny on the Internet or policy decisions about radicalization on the Internet.
All of these examples are going to kind of have to deal with the galaxy of rights, and not only with the galaxy of rights, but I'm saying they have got to take into account the OAM because you are messing with the OAM, you are going to mess with the Internet and you can destroy the Internet easily if you are going to kill openness, accessibility and multistakeholder participation.
>> ALAN FINLAY: Are there any other comments on that?
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Yesterday we discussed the rights‑based approach, and in a way I think your UNESCO OAM is a kind of different way of articulating the rights‑based approach to development. Just because of the emphasis on participation but that's just, it's just a reflection.
>> ALAN FINLAY: Okay. Lea, I think Anriette will speak more specific to you about the charter. So we should move to the final component, and do you want to speak?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. Okay. So next point is communication outputs, so just as a bit of context of where we are at with that. The idea is to produce a series of materials or not. That's part of the discussion we want to have, a series of materials or just one big piece that speaks to your needs in terms of this project.
We have faced many challenges while thinking through that. It hasn't been easy. And we are really glad to have this space to hear what are your perspectives, what are the kind of products that would be more useful to reach the target groups that we have identified. We are really wanting to do something in a visual format, something very attractive, appealing, something that speaks to specific groups but also understandable for, from any other audiences. I agree with you, Guy, we were discussing that with Alan precisely about how difficult it is when we deal with ESCR, how big of a cluster it is, and we were wondering if from the communications point of view it was a useful strategy or not to go via ESCR as a whole or whether to split them up in some ways and produce different communication outputs depending on whether they are economic, social and cultural rights.
That was one approach that we thought about. Then we went to the book, to the GISWatch publication you have seen. It's going to be launched on Friday, room 9, by the way. And this publication has amazing content, okay? And as I said in the first day of this workshop yesterday, we always struggle to communicate all of this content. So we have 47 country reports from people who are working and engaged on the ground, and if they are not, they have engaged with grassroots groups working on economic, social and cultural rights. And we also said, okay, how cool would it be to think about the communication outputs that we are talking about now using all of this amazing information that we already have here. We don't have to reinvent the wheel.
So the question for this moment of the workshop is basically to try to gather ideas that you might have in terms of what could work. If format is one of the questions, what do you think a video format would be more useful, an infographic or different infographics? What should they be? What should be the criteria if by global, regional, regional focus? If by theme, if by rights, you know, there are many ways of approaching this. So I would like to hear from you if you have ideas or experience in producing content for this, for this topic. We would really appreciate any kind of input. I don't know if I left something out. I think that was it.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: There are a lot of GISWatch authors in the room so maybe for those of you to think about those of you that wrote chapters, what would have been useful?
>> VALENTIA PELIZZER: I would go to the basic and through story, so if it's culture, try to visualize what culture means and what are the implications. There are always big crossroads where things can turn for better or for the worst. And then, of course, if we, I think that I need to be also culturally sensitive because there is a global that is probably perceived as common, but it's not so true, but I would start from the story. It can be the story we have already in the GISWatch or other story but linking in this way from a real experience, it can be very minimalistic, but I think the people would relate and when there is so much, especially if you affront people with rights. I think we are exhausted of rights. We are exhausted of fighting while all of the world that somehow we try to change is so smooth, you know, Facebook is very smooth in censoring.
And you don't even perceive how much has been changed and formatted. And the same for the other big actors and Government and so on. So I think the stories could be one entry point, and then try to work in a very open format so that it can be also translated because I think the translation when we go to the local it's always very challenging. You have wonderful resources, but more words, more money, more time, more resources. So sometimes having just like a map, a trait with the small words, it's in an open or difficult format it can also be translated, adapted more easily in other realities. Sometimes the more costly, the more difficult is the idea how to make something understandable, and then I think in this way we would work more side by side, small area, small country, small community, poorer community, richer community, so it's more reasoned.
>> ALAN FINLAY: In the case of your country report, it would be like there was a national museum that wasn't being financed and.
>> VALENTIA PELIZZER: And then we can go for the more sensible and sensitive political conversation that needs to happen but in different spaces. Activity that using Internet had brought from the personality of, you know, night life to the cities and this movement and this museum network is now open. The other stories and other story when we have an archive which is a feminist archive is more challenging because linking to the past, the past of the social, and in a region that is going widely fascist right wing, it's of course something that is not difficult to have people on board because the mode, the politics is, it's clear, the more dividing is the issue.
But, for example, the museum which can unite people can be a good way of telling a story of culture and explaining how these rights have been. And then we can go for the more sensible and sensitive political conversation that needs to happen, but in different spaces.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: So what I'm visualizing here is something like a story, and then you can pull out of the story what are the rights specific issues, what are the mechanisms. So it's kind of almost a cross linking, and maybe you could have a few, maybe we could do something, we could have a culture story. We could have a labor rights story. We could have an education story and a health story. That doesn't cover everything, and that might be a way of illustrating what ESCR and how they relate to instruments. Flavia, you had a question?
>> FLAVIA FASCENDINI: I wanted to share an idea that we had and I was wondering if you guys would find it useful or not. And I would ask for honesty in that. So we were wondering how useful do you think it would be to produce some sort of infographic like very straight forward and nice infographic drawing on one of the thematic reports that we have in the publication which is a report written by Debra Brown, our global advocacy coordinator in APC and she basically maps the mechanism, the existing mechanisms on ESCRs. So we were wondering how useful that kind of content would be for you and how applicable to your context as well. I see Kimberly saying yes.
>> AUDIENCE: My question on infographics when it comes to it is that it can be cumbersome. You probably are looking at 15 to 20 different kinds of mechanisms. It's usually more helpful to have a smaller booklet than an infographics because it's quite hard to digest how the UNHRC touches on economic, social, cultural rights in one page. Whereas doing infographics on how the Internet intersections with these rights is, perhaps, is perhaps in my visualization better suited for infographics in that sense. So that's one. Because APC have done ‑‑
>> AUDIENCE: (Speaking off microphone).
>> It depends on at what level you are doing advocacy.
>> AUDIENCE: (Speaking off microphone).
>> Then something like that is useful, but if your aim is to make use of something there, then you are going to need a little bit more evidence than just showing A,B,C,D exists for me. But on the infographics, my point I wanted to make is that sometimes ‑‑ I don't know how to put it, but I think both for civil and political rights and economic, social, cultural rights, our reports, I think perhaps the fundamental problem connecting to what Valentina is saying we need to know what audience we are writing for because when we are writing these materials I feel like we are trying to cater to four or five different sectors, and what appeals to UN mechanisms is not going to appeal to Civil Society groups or to people exercising these rights.
And not to say we are dumbing it down, but I think perhaps the problem is we are overcomplicating the concepts and we are perhaps over intellectualizing them. So I think when talking about infographics, what would be more useful is to see what suits infographics for that. If it's only key messaging, then infographics works. If we have data that stands outstanding, infographics would work. But videos is a great way to address what David is talking about, the non‑recognition for economic, social, cultural rights, intersection of the Internet. I think a video on that whether it's an animation or whatever could be useful.
>> STEVE ZELTZER: Steve Zeltzer from LaborNet APC. One of the things I think is important is what is called worker‑generated content, and this is content produced by workers around the world about their issues, their struggles, and their concerns. And in China, for example, there is a growing number of worker generated content material on the Internet. There are 500 Smart Phones in China ‑‑ 500 million Smart Phones in China, which means that workers have the potential of getting their stories out using their Smart Phones in a broad way, in a popular way.
And this is historic. It's never been possible before. And I think it's something that really needs to be developed. What we are working towards is an international labor channel where workers around the world can get stories out, issues, strikes, education, history, on a channel live by streaming.
I think especially in the United States where corporate control of the media is very strong and many workers feel that their issues are not being recognized and spoken of. So I think we see the need for alternative media centre, alternative communication network that allows working people to express themselves, get their stories out and to break the information blockade.
I know many people around the world were shocked by the election of Donald Trump who in my view is a racist reactionary anti‑working class really, but he uses populism to say that he is for people, for the working people, and he uses social media. In fact, in the United States, during the election campaign there was a lot of false stories on the Internet, amazing amounts. Every day another false story, news story, quote, unquote, news story. And I was being sent this material. What is this? Where is this coming from? You don't know.
So I think the issue of workers news, workers information is very important to get the actual story, the truth out about what's happening to working people, and I think our, we have an opportunity now to develop the Internet, develop communication networks that will actually get out real stories, real issues facing working people. And the other thing is spying on working people. Workers who use Facebook, for example, have been fired for complaints about the health and safety on their job.
Employers and companies are watching very carefully what people say. So if a worker expresses concern about his health and safety or her health and safety on the job, that can be used to fire them, although it's illegal, of course. So there is an issue of education among working people about the potential dangers of social media, because a massive amount of information is being collected on social media, and companies are tracking social media to follow workers in their companies.
And this is a growing concern that we have to have about the protection of worker rights, Democratic rights, communication rights for working people. If they express themselves on social media platforms, Facebook and others, they can be retaliated against for their points of view. This is an issue of Democratic rights. People should have the right of free speech. Of course, on the job, you don't really have the right of free speech if this happens, and it does happen where people are retaliated against for speaking out about their issues.
>> ALAN FINLAY: Thanks, Steve.
>> AUDIENCE: The opportunity APC gives me each time I come to a global meeting, sometimes it makes me more depressed because I go back appreciating how much deeper the digital divide has become. And when I think of the access issues in my country, Nigeria, I'm sorry ‑‑ I'm John from Nigeria. I work with (?) foundation. When I think of the access issues in Nigeria, and the age divide, the youth are very much focused on the use of social media, largely for entertainment.
The older generation are not interested in the Internet. Their interest in use of the phone is the exchange of information. And yet I realize that there is so much misinformation, disinformation, both online and off line. So for me, I would rather go for the issue of analyzing existing stories of experiences and teasing out the economic and social rights issues in the various stories, and then translating this into the local dialect. That way maybe to localize, make relevant those ESCR issues in my context. And I don't think it even matters where the story is coming from.
Any story can be analyzed within the context of ESCR under issues that are of relevance to that particular community can be brought out and made relevant to that community. That's the way I begin to see this ESCR unfolding. I'm looking forward to the next version of GISWatch and I would rather go for the story angle analyzing and trying to bring it home to where I live, and I think by doing that, we can begin to connect the dots around the world.
I can see the issues in the U.S, in Mexico may be a bit different from the issues over there where I come from. But the bottom line, I think, are some basic ESCR issues that we can draw out and use as basis for communicating to our people.
>> ALAN FINLAY: I'm sorry I have been informed we need to actually leave the room. So, make your point.
>> When you are looking at how to communicate, you need to have some previous steps, some have been mentioned which is in what context and who you want to communicate to you? What are the messages you want to get across, and depending on that, which formats and types of information to prioritize to reach that particular public. So, for example, the book that's come out is basically a resource for consultation.
So within the kind of strategies we have been talking about here, we need to look at what are the key communication needs at a specific moment. So what are the issues that are most likely to either mobilize or what are the key advocacy moments we are working on and then around that, define maybe several instruments which could include visuals, which could include infographics, which could include social networks, depending on the kind of message you need to get out and to who. Maybe use viral messages for some very specific campaigns at specific moments. And it's useful to then, even with the very short messages have a link to March information so whoever is interested can then go to different levels of more information.
>> ANRIETTE ESTERHUYSEN: Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you for coming. I know it's a bit odd sometimes to join into a project that you haven't been part of, but you all really contributed, and thanks to Ilana who has been slaving away for the last two years and thanks to IDRC for making this work possible and for bringing us all together. Thanks very much, and everyone else who has worked on this, David, Lea, Flavia, I don't know who else is still here, but thanks a lot.
(Concluded at 1300).