RightsCon, UNGPs celebrate first ten years

Voltaire Veneracion

29 June 2021

AccessNow Executive Director Brett Solomon called for the release of the imprisoned Egyptian blogger Alaa Abt El-Fattah in his RightsCon welcome remarks

From 7 to 11 June 2021, a record-breaking 9,120 participants from 164 countries joined 527 RightsCon 2021 online sessions on digital rights impacted by the operations of technology companies and the policies of governments.

Event topics, curated by organiser and host AccessNow, ranged from Myanmar’s post-coup internet to accountability in policing and surveillance.

In his welcome message to the community at the opening ceremony, AccessNow Executive Director Brett Solomon noted that RightsCon and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) this year 2021 were both celebrating their first ten years.

Solomon said:

It’s also the 10th Anniversary of the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights, which permanently changed the way we talk about corporate accountability and takes us back to where RightsCon first started, as the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference in downtown San Francisco in 2011. From India to Colombia to Palestine, and in a world of increased inequality, digital authoritarianism, and institutional crisis, the Silicon Valley business model needs more than tinkering at the edges, it needs an overhaul.

Solomon also called on Egypt to immediately release blogger and past RightsCon participant Alaa Abd El-Fattah who had been imprisoned by authorities in what the community sees as the legitimate exercise of his digital right to freedom of speech.

Working Group on BHR, Rapporteurs’ call

Prior to the event, Special Rapporteurs of nine UN Special Procedures who joined RightsCon issued a joint statement marking the occasion. The Rapporteurs emphasized that digital rights must be prioritized to rebuild civic space amid recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Rapporteur experts stated:

Despite the instrumental role of the internet and digital technologies, which have provided new avenues for the exercise of public freedoms and access to health and related information and care in particular during the COVID-19 pandemic, States continue to leverage these technologies to muzzle dissent, surveil, and quash online and offline collective action and the tech companies have done too little to avert such abuse of human rights.

We are deeply concerned that these patterns of abuse, which have further accelerated under the exigencies of the pandemic, will continue and exacerbate inequalities worldwide.”

We need to act together to embrace the fast-pace expansion of digital space and technological solutions that are safe, inclusive and rights-based.

Dante Pesce (Chairperson), Surya Deva (Vice-Chairperson), Elżbieta Karska, Githu Muigai, and Anita Ramasastry of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights were among the experts who signed the statement.

The others were:

• Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism;
• Clément Voule, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association;
• Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights;
• David R. Boyd, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Environment;
• Gerard Quinn, Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities;
• Tlaleng Mofokeng, Special Rapporteur on the right to physical and mental health;
• Irene Khan, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression;
• Mary Lawlor, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders.

Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council.

Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world.

Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work.

They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.

Tune in to broadcasts

While most RightsCon 2021 events were accessible only to registered participants, who were given the option to secure free or paid tickets depending on financial need, select high profile sessions were subsequently broadcast to the world on AccessNow’s YouTube channel.

They include the following press briefings:

• PRESS BRIEFING: #KeepItOn for democracy: elections and internet shutdowns with Richard Mulonga, Founder & CEO, Bloggers of Zambia; Amir Rashidi, Director of Digital Rights and Security, Miaan Group, Iran; Harold Adjaho, President, Internet Society, Benin Chapter; Melody Patry, Advocacy Director, Access Now; and others;

• PRESS BRIEFING: New government, old tactics: laws abused to throttle online expression in Malaysia with Wathshlah Naidu, Executive Director, Centre for Independent Journalism; Steven Gan, Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Malaysiakini; Edmund Bon, Lawyer, AmerBON Advocates, former Malaysia representative at AICHR; Fahmi Reza, Artist and Activist; and Nalini Elumalai, Malaysia Program Officer, Article 19; and

• PRESS BRIEFING: What’s happening in India’s online space? Combatting an epidemic of censorship with David Kaye, Independent Chair of the GNI, former U.N. Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression; Sushant Sinha, Founder, Indian Kanoon; Siddharth Varadarajan, Founder and Editor, the Wire; Gayatri Khandhadai, Asia Policy Regional Coordinator, Association for Progressive Communication; and others.

Broadcasts also include informal conversations such as:

• Fireside chat with Paz Peña, Consultant on tech, environment, and social justice, and David R. Boyd, U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment; and
• Fireside chat with Maria Ressa, Co-Founder and CEO, Rappler, and Supriya Sharma, Executive Editor, <https://scroll.in/>)

Watch the video from RightsCon 2021 Press Briefing: #KeepItOn for democracy: elections and internet shutdowns”