IGF 2023 - Day 0 - Event #191 Strategic Litigation in LATAM on Gender Digital Violence

>> MODERATOR SEQUERA: Okay, thank you very much. I want to thank you for all being here. We are going to start this panel. "Strategic Litigation in LATAM on Gender Digital Violence".

So we can start with the video. In Spanish.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

>> MODERATOR SEQUERA: The next video is an organisation in LATAM too.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

>> MODERATOR SEQUERA: Okay, Lia?

TEDIC?

>> LIA: How many English speakers here? If I need to speak English  --

My name is Lia Rodriguez. IPANDETEC. I will talk about our experience on strategic litigation in cases of online gender based violence in Panama. We have presented two cases in Panama. Segunas Lina is a gender prospect project in the second part of the project we started like a special phase of initial legal advising in Central America. We are helping two people in Panama to present to the minister like a claim because they have been victim of online harassment. The third case is like an influencer. This is a very famous influencer in Panama that she was a victim of online harassment for like the girl from the diverse community. So we present with the Minister of Panama a claim because she is victim of online gender violence. The Polic Minister of Panama says that is not online gender violence because the gender violence is only when a guy, so a man is attacking a girl or when a girl is attacking a man. In the case of people from the diversity community doesn't assist that case.

So we started a new claim against like a claim against their privacy their intimacy and their honour and the prosecutor accepted these claims. But the problem is that the politic administration like countries in Central America they don't know about these topic, about gender perspective. It's very difficult for us. We were trying to push the case, presenting proof, going to the private psychologies to analyze her, that she was a victim of online gender-based violence. She had anxiety and all these documents we presented to the prosecutor and he say that, in their opinion, it wasn't like a proper case of privacy invasion or against her honour. So they filed the case and now we are trying to reopen the case because we think that the only way to generate like precedence in our countries is still struggling against the system.

Unfortunately, we don't have like a proper legislation about informatic crimes. Panama is the second country in Central America, well in Latin America that signed Geneva convention but our regulation has been operating since 2013 so we have 30 years trying to operate in the country. So it's a problem. It's not just a problem for the victims but also for the public minister and for the judicial employees because they don't have the resources to follow the crimes. That is their main  --  as employees so we still continue working in this process in the countries. And we have another case, this with another organisation in Panama. And it's a case of a girl she was a victim of online harassment. Her former partner was blackmailing her to publish or posting their pictures on social media. Actually, he send her pictures on WhatsApp telegram group.

With this process we have been helping her with some funds from the project to support the case. And I hope that in the next month or maybe in the next year we can see one of in some of this kind of event and tell you we have won the case.

But sometimes it's very difficult for the Civil Society Organisation and the victims, if we don't have resources or very strong law, like a legal regulation framework upgraded, updated regulation, it's very difficult. So for that reason we request to the authorities, we request to the congresswoman and congressman in our country that it's very necessary to upgrade our digital legal regulatory framework. Because now this influencer and this girl was victim of online harassment. But maybe tomorrow your sister, your daughter, your mother, or your friend could be the next victim.

So thank you so much. If you have any question I will be here until the end of the session.

>> MODERATOR SEQUERA: Okay, thank you.

Let's move to comments. Any comments here?

Anyone?

>> Hi, everyone, my name is dean, Centro América NGO Hiperderecho in Peru. This is reminding me in the south, we have this lack of knowledge how technology works and also a lack of knowledge on gender violence approach when authorities like judges or attorneys take these cases.

When I can think of our project that Lucia spoke before, there is not only needed legislative reform about having these types of crimes and digital spheres into our penal codes, or criminal codes or legislation. But also it needs to have judges and attorneys and lawyers with the knowledge with that strong knowledge how technology works. And also able to apply gender-based perspective on justice.

So maybe I will like to ask Lia here. What else will be desired or maybe in our panel, what else will be desired to hear legislative modifications on our criminal codes, in order to have real justice in our regions when we talk about digital violence, gender-based digital violence?

>> MODERATOR SEQUERA: Anyone?

>> Thank you. Hola, Buenos Tardes. Indonesia. I can't speak Spanish much. But learning from what happened in Indonesia we have a lot of gender based violence cases during COVID-19. And many of the victims act not so much in the litigation process but they are asking more take down the content from the platforms.

So I'm going to ask the experience from Latin America, is there any effort doing this confiscation or process with the platform to take down the content? P  Because that's the hardest part.

That and in Indonesia, we are so lucky because we already passed anti-sexual violence last year. Accessing regulatory frameworks before we can accommodate the victims of gender-based violence but lucky we already have the law now. But I agree with Dean. The law itself, it didn't solve the problems. Because judges, lawyers and prosecutors they didn't have the gender perspective. So they didn't understand they can use this anti-sexual violence to accommodate the needs from the victims. So that's learning from Indonesia. I hope you can answer the first questions regarding the responsibility from the platform. Thank you.

>> DEAN: Well, thank you. At least in the case of Peru, we have a partnership with Meta that when we speak these messages can go through the platform we can send and have a take down from this kind of, when we take into account some of these images are on its platform.

But it's a very big problem when we talk about internet because once the image, or I don't know, the video is there, taking absolutely it down is almost, I don't know, we will say impossible because it can be anywhere, any website. So it's important, I think, to have these connections with platform, another website than ours that comply with some regulations. But I think it's a very, very big gap with some organizations here that we can directly speak with platforms to take down this type of content. I'm thinking about, I don't know, content or explicit material that can be uploaded to only similar web pages.

But it's a very, very big task that we have here.

>> In the case of Panama we have from Facebook, from Meta and Twitter they are from Mexico city. But we have contact with them. But the problem is the time of response from our request are not the same as the response of the European Union or United States.

They have a special project that the data agency is in communication with Meta to take down that information but we don't have that with the authorities in Latin America. So maybe to replicate the good practice, best practice of those countries in the world. It's also a case of our regulation. We don't have very strong regulation like the European Union. Some countries in Central America, they don't have the protection of law. So they try to, but they are not work in our region because they don't have like a regulation that enforce them to act legitimately. So let's see if things change in the next years, but I think it's very important that the Meta, Twitter or digital platform, they shouldn't make a difference between our regions and other regions in the world. Probably same as in Indonesia, I don't know.

My main recommendation is stay in contact with social media. If you have friends or a partner on social media companies or big tech companies have contact with them. Actually we have one, we all the time send him to his Instagram, like a screen shot of the publication, but unfortunately he was victim  --  last March so we don't have this contact any more in Meta.

>> I'm sort of part of this panel as well. Also with TEDIC with Maricarmen. I think at the end we need to push to move forward and not have this model that relies on intermediaries to make sure content is taken down where a victim is asking for help on cases of gender-based violence. For example of the partners they have been using the past years you are very limited in the type of actor you can help, right?

So the problem is much more bigger than just human rights offenders or perhaps journalists are suffering online gender based violence. Like Lia mentioned, although I must say it's possible good to have this model where a data protection agency has a direct link with Meta, the problem goes beyond that data protection in general as in dissemination.

How to give more justice to victims outs side of the judicial system outside the platform, it's the platform that should be more swiftly have standards that allow to take down the content in  an at scale way at least. That's it.

>> I think you can use the mic there.

>> Hi, hello. I am Carla, I'm from APC, I live in Mexico so I can relate to the issue. First of all, thank you very much for all the amazing work that you do in the different organisations. It's very admirable to have people like you fighting for these issues because I know it can be very frustrating. Even yes. Very difficult, because you work with the victims and hear their stories and also deal with you know, psychology issues and how the victims approach.

I have two questions. My first question is if there is any place where you have been documenting the litigation cases that you are following. If we can access them, how can we take a look at this information? How can we use it for cases in other countries. If there's a repository, where can we find it? If not, how can we create it. This is my first question and second question, in the different countries where you are at, how has it been working with the national governments and the ministries? How feasible do you see to have data protection commissions or regulators or like, how is the situation generally in each of your countries? Because I'm not that familiar. I would love to know more about that. And what do you think can be done to have this type of institutions? A third question that just came to my head, sorry, what has worked? Because we have been hearing of the complications and the context. But what do you think has really worked, even if they are small things that have worked? But do you have any type of things that have worked and that you use in your every day practices you could share with us? These are my three questions. Thank you.

>> DEAN: Thank you very much. In the case of Peru, I will start with the third question. What we think that work in our strategic litigation is that we had a legal team that was all the time take our legal cases. We had a lawyer that has those cases, was behind the prosecutor calling emailing all the time. Only because of that our cases will get moved forward. Because without the presence in that case, the case we have, we couldn't move forward. So I think that it worked is have a team or maybe people that behind that cases.

That is also very sad because most of the people that suffers online gender-based violence doesn't have the money to hire a lawyer and have this lawyer looking for justice. What happened in our case is that, I don't think that we have like a repository on these decisions and all the materials that we have. And I think it could work for us to share our resources and to share the cases we had in Hiperderecho we had universal grand decision in a case. It would be very, very helpful to share with everybody that case.

So right now, our decisions of cases are with Hiperderecho.org. That's it. The second question was about with relation to protection  --  in the case of gender violence we didn't use contact protection authorities. So we have some kind of relation but for other further issues, in our case get to the protection authorities to seek justice for these cases. But also we can explore to use protection authority and I think our organisation can make legal framework to help victims but in our cases we haven't explored it.

>> Our case in Panama, I invite all of you to visit our website. Seguras and Lina.Ca. CA for Central America. We have some block section. If you are a victim of online gender violence you can go there to the public minister to whatever you want. And also we have more info about the cases there but it's anonymous because we are not reflecting personal information about these victims on these websites.

The question about the relation with the prosecutor, with this project we have started some relation with the prosecutor. Mainly in Costa Rica, Panama and also Guatemala. Actually we organise extra space with the prosecutor from Panama and Costa Rica on these topics. They are very aware this is an important information that is useful for them as well, not just our population. We have a relationship with them and about the data protection authorities. In Central America we only have two data protection authorities in Panama and Costa Rica. We also have a very close relationship with them. We meet them in some events around the world, especially in the protection events. And the protection authority in Panama, they recently launched like a two data protection, lines for information in case of online gender-based. So it's very important these kind of materials, because this is information material funded by the InterAmerican development bank, was made by Costa Rican consultant. And she reflect all the info about in the cases of online gender violence the authorities in Panama should use the information, the personal information. So I think that is very much real. You also can find these on anti.gov.ca (?)

>> I think because your question was referring to a centralized place where all regional or strategic litigations were centralized. I'm not sure that exists. We have a website where you can find information on that strategic litigation, it's in English and Spanish.

You can look not only the case but how it has evolved overtime. There's a network, women’s rights online network. We launched it last year, this tech policy design lab resource, there's a lot of information on online gender based violence all across the world, continents so that's a good resource as well. I don't have the url in my head.

We are currently working on finding common things online gender-based violence that will be accessible on the website and it's something you can use.

I have a quick announcement. We are currently planning a workshop across the world to engage with people who are involved in some way with working online gender-based violence. If you are interested please leave me your contact and I can put it in the database and include a follow-up in those workshops and collectively work that definition could potentially look like. So yeah, that's it.

>> All right, I'm Luis Fernando Castro from Brazil, I'm a lawyer and former professor and member of IACHR. I'm not specialized in criminal law. But we have view of internet in Brazil. And this law says that primarily the internet service provider are not responsible for the content that people upload. Like porn revenge or something like we heard in this session.

But when it treats about sexual privacy and infant images, internet providers are obliged to shut down, take down the content since they are notified. Otherwise they will be co responsible as joint responsible for identification. I can't tell you how that solution helps a lot. The providers don't want to spend money to identify victims. Sometimes it's more useful to have this kind of solution than to have a very complex and difficult penal and criminal procedure. Thank you.

>> I want to say something about your intervention. Actually, we are participating as well in cybercrime discussion in UN. The point of the convention, the UN convention about cybercrime is that the delegates from all the countries all over the world, that they took more time to discuss what is the topic about the child and the woman protections online. Because what is the difference between the countries from the Middle East Latin America, and some countries for example, Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua? They were discussing how they can protect the childhood in this convention because there are a lot of cases in our countries but we don't have regulation to protect them. So thanks for your participation in our panel.

>> MODERATOR SEQUERA: Last question? Anyone? Okay.

We are finished. Thank you very much, all.

For understanding Spanish too. Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much.

For being here.

[ Applause ]