Privacy and Human Rights

              This post is a summary of the article with the incomplete title above published in 2005 at  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242448871_Privacy_human_rights-an_international_survey_of_privacy_laws_and_developments/link/5a58d99e45851545026fc712/dow

                Privacy is a fundamental human rights recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in many other international and regional treaties. Privacy underpins human dignity and other values such as freedom of speech. It has become one of the most important human rights issues of the modern age. Nearly every country in the world recognizes a right of privacy in their constitution. At a minimum, these provisions include rights of inviolability of the home and secrecy of communications. Most recently written constitutions such as South Africa's and Hungary's include specific right to access and control one's personal information. In many of the countries where privacy is not explicitly recognized in the constitution, such as the United States, Ireland and India, the courts have found that right in other provisions. In the early 1970s, countries began adopting broad laws intended to protect individual privacy. Throughout the world, their is a general movement towards adopting comprehensive privacy laws that set a framework for protection. Most of these laws are based on the models introduced by the OECD and the Council of Europe. The increasing sophistication of information technology with its capacity to collect, analize and disseminate information on individuals introduced a sense of urgency to the demand for privacy legislation. Furthermore, new developments in medical research and care, telecommunication and financial dramatically increased the level of information generated by each individual. According to opinion polls, concern over privacy violations is now greater than at any time in history. Uniformly, populations throughout the world express fears about encroachment on privacy, prompting an unprecedented number of nation to pass laws protecting the privacy of their citizens. It is now common wisdom that the power, capacity and speed of information technology is accelerating rapidly. The extent of privacy invasion, or certainly the potential to invade privacy, increases correspondingly. Beyond these obvious aspects of capacity and cost, there are a number of important trends that contribute to privacy invasion. 1) Globalization - removes geographical limitations to the flow of data. The development of the Internet is the best known example of a global technology. 2) Convergence- is leading to the elimination of technological barriers between systems 3) Multi-Media- fuses many forms of transmission and expression of data and images. The macro-trend outlined above had particular effect on surveillance. The transfer of surveillance tech from developed to developing nations is now a lucrative sideline for the arms industry. According to a 1997 report, "Assessing the Technologies of Political Control," commissioned by the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee, much of this technology is used to track the activities of human rights activists, journalists, student leaders and political opponents. the report concludes that such technologies can exert a powerful `chilling effect` on those who might wish to take a dissenting view. In the absence of meaningful legal protections, such tech is inimical to democratic reform. Privacy has roots deep in history. The Bible has numerous references to privacy.  There was also substantive protection of privacy in early Hebrew culture, classical Greece and ancient China. Privacy protection is frequently seen as a way of drawing the line at how far society can intrude into a person's affairs. The Preamble to the Australian Privacy Charter provides, "a free and democratic society requires respect for the autonomy of individuals, and limits on the power of both state and private organizations to intrude on that autonomy." It also states, "Privacy is a key value which underpins human dignity..." Privacy can be defined as a fundamental human right. The law of privacy can be traced as far as 1361, when the English Justices of the Peace Act provided for the arrest of peeping toms and eavesdroppers. In 1792, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen declared that private property is inviolable and sacred. France prohibited the publication of private facts and set stiff fines for violators in 1858. Interest in the right of privacy increased in the 1970s with the advent of IT. The surveillance potential of computer systems prompted demands for specific rules governing the collection and handling of personal information. There are three major reasons for the movement towards comprehensive privacy and data protection laws. Many countries are adopting these laws for one or more of the following reasons: 1) To remedy past injustices - many countries, especially in Central Europe and South America, are adopting laws to remedy privacy violations that occurred under previous authoritarian regimes.  2) To promote electronic commerce - many countries are developing laws to promote electronic commerce. These countries recognize consumers are uneasy with their personal information being sent worldwide.  In the past three years, The European Union enacted two directives providing citizens with a wider range of protections over abuses of their data. Several principles of data protection are strengthened under the Directives. the key concept in the European model is "enforceability" The E.U. is concerned that data subjects have rights that are enshrined in explicit rules, and they can go to a person that can act on their behalf. 

The Education Crisis: Being in School Is Not the Same as Learning

              This post is a summary of the article published in January 2019 at  https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/immersive-story/2019/01/22/pass-or-fail-how-can-the-world-do-its-homework

              THE NAME OF THE DOG IS PUPPY. This seems like a simple sentence. But did know that in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, three out of four third grade students do not understand it? In rural India, nearly three-quarters of third graders ca not solve a two-digit subtraction problem such as 46 minus 17, and by grade five - half still can not do so. The world is facing a learning crisis. While countries have significantly increased access to education, being in school is not the same thing as learning. Worldwide, hundreds of millions of children reach young adulthood without even the most basic skills like calculating the correct change from a transaction, reading a doctor`s instructions or understanding a bus schedule, let alone building a fulfilling career or educating their children. Delivered well, education - along with the human capital it generates - benefits individuals and societies. For individuals, education raises self-esteem and furthers opportunities for employment and earnings. And for a country, it help strengthen institutions within societies, drives long-term economic growth, reduces poverty, and spurs innovation. Annette Dixon, Vice-President Human Development of World Bank, said, "It`s never too late for young people to have opportunities to learn. Our youth deserve to be equipped with the skills they need to thrive in a increasingly demanding job world. Given that today`s students will be tomorrow`s citizens and leaders, a good and relevant education is essential to turn aspirations into reality."  One big reason the learning crisis persist is that many education systems across the developing world have little information on who is learning and who is not. As a result, it is hard for them to do anything about it. A growing body of evidence suggest the learning crisis is, at its core, a teaching crisis. For students to learn, they need good teachers - but many education systems pay little attention to what teachers know, what they do in the classroom, and in some cases whether they even show up. Fortunately for many students, in every country, there are dedicated and enthusiastic teachers who, despite all challenges, enrich and transform their lives. They are heroes who defy the odds and make learning happen with passion, creativity and determination. One such hero works in the Ecoles Eddahab school in Kenitra, Morocco. In a colorful classroom that she painted herself, she uses creative tools to make sure that every child learns, participates, and has fun. But even heroes need help. We need to be sure that all teachers are motivated to do their best and that they are equipped with what they need to teach effectively.  Rapid technological change is raising the stakes. Technology is already playing a crucial role in providing support to teachers, students, and the learning process more broadly. It can help teachers better manage the classroom and offer different challenges to different students. And technology can allow principals, parents and students to interact seamlessly. Millions of students are benefiting from the effective use of technology, but millions more in the developing world are not. One of the most interesting, large scale educational technology efforts is being led by  EkStep , a philanthropic effort in India. It was created an open digital infrastructure which provides access to learning opportunities for 200 million children, as well as professional development opportunities for 12 million teachers. We know learning happens best when instruction is personalized to meet the needs and strengths of each child, individual progress is tracked, and prompt feedback provided. In a field that is developing at dizzying speeds, innovative solutions to educational challenges are springing up everywhere. Our challenge is to make technology a driver of equity and inclusion and nont a source of greater inequality. Successful education reforms require good policy design, strong political commitment, and effective implementation capacity. Many countries struggle to make efficient use of resources and very often increased education spending does not translate into more learning and improved human capital. Overcoming such challenges involves working at all levels of the system. Change is possible, public schools across Punjab in Pakistan have been part of major reforms over the past few years. Through improved school-level accountability by monitoring and limiting teacher and student absenteeism, and the introduction of a merit-based teacher recruitment system. No change can happen without data. government need to know what their education systems are missing - or what is being done right - to take the right steps to improve. By their nature, the payoffs from investing in education require patience and persistence. In fact, it will take a generation to realize the full benefits of high-quality teachers, effective use of technology, improved management of schools, and engaged and prepared learners. However, global experience shows us that countries that have rapidly accelerated development and prosperity all share the common characteristic of taking education seriously and investing appropriately. The schools of the future must be built today. These are schools where all teachers have the right competencies, where technology empowers them to deliver quality learning, and where all students learn fundamental skills, including socio-emotional, and digital skills. Governments, teachers, parents, and the international community must do their homework to realize the promise of education for all students, in every village, in every city, in every country.

90th Birthday of Anne Frank

                  Almost one month ago, precisely on 12th June, the Jewish refugee Anne Frank would complete 90 years-old, so this post is a tribute to her. For her writings we can understand well the horror of injustice, the sadness from lack of freedom, and the consequences of abuse of power. Therefore when we learned about the horror of any authoritarian regime we started to realize how is important, essential and worth to fight for human rights, democracy, rule of law and justice. Sometimes the horror of systematic abuse of power and injustice can happen in democratic regime as well. And when this happens, we all should fight for justice and help the victims, because if not you can be the next victim. This post is a summary of three articles. The first was published at  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/anne-frank-90th-birthday-diary-holocaust-hiding-nazis-second-world-war-teenager-a8946491.html. The second was published at  https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Anne-Franks-Diary-reading-to-honor-her-90th-birthday-in-Venices-Ghetto-592000. The third was published at https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/anne-diarist-icon/

                  Anne Frank, the Jewish schoolgirl whose diaries of her time in hiding during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands stands as one of the most significant documents to arise from the Holocaust, would have celebrated her 90th birthday on 12 June. The Frank family had relocated to Amsterdam in 1943 to escape rising antisemitism in their native Frankfurt, part of a mass exodus that saw some 300,000 Jews flee Adolfo Hitler`s Germany between 1933 and 1939. Settling in an apartment, Otto and Edith Frank and their daughters Margot and Anne adjusted to their new surroundings relatively comfortably at first. Anne attended a Montessori school, learned Dutch and demonstrated a particular aptitude for reading and writing. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Hitler`s Germany took the Netherlands on May 1940, the occupying government moving quickly to introduce the same prejudicial laws the Franks had already been subjected to in Frankfurt. When the state attempted to confiscate Otto`s business, he transferred his shares to a gentile friend, and resigned as director. Margot and Anne had meanwhile been removed from their respective schools and sent to the Jewish Lyceum. A month later, Margot received a letter from the Central Office ordering her to report to a labor camp. On July 1942, Otto moved the family into a secret annex he had furnished at the rear of his workplace. Until the Gestapo stormed the annex on August 1944, arresting the occupants, jailing their assistants and dispatching the Frank family to Auschwitz, Anne found solace in her diary. In her diary, she recorded her most intimate thoughts and feelings. Anne Frank would no doubt have been both delighted and stunned to learn of the publishing sensation her diary would become after it was salvaged by Miep Gies following her death from typhus at Bergen-Belsen in February 1945, aged just 15.

                 Had the Holocaust never happened, Anne Frank could have turned 90 on June 12. To honor the occasion, a marathon reading of her well-known diary will take place in Campo di Ghetto Novo, the main square of Venice`s Ghetto. Ninety people, as many as the years she would have celebrated, will take turns reading the whole volume in the Italian translation over several hours. All participants, including religious and political leaders, athletes, and artists, will each read five or six pages of the book. After the Nazis occupied the Netherlands, the Franks went into hiding. They were discovered and arrested in 1944, Anne, her sister Margot and their mother did not survive the death camps. The diary that she had kept from her 13th birthday to the day of her arrest was first published in 1947 and is considered one of the most powerful pieces of literature about the Holocaust. The event, "90 voices for Anne Frank," has been promoted by the Italian writer Matteo Corradini. The reading will be broadcast live by the Italian national public radio.

                How did a diary, abandoned in a fragmentary state, become one of the world`s  most widely read books? And how did its author become a figure of international renown, despite having died two years before the book was first issued? As remarkable as Anne Frank`s diary is, the story of its publication and its engagement by millions of readers around the world over the past seven decades is equally powerful. The book was first issued in 1947 and translated in French and German in 1950 and English in 1952. Within a few years, a dramatization of Anne`s diary was staged on Broadway, then performed internationally and filmed in Hollywood. The Frank`s former hiding place became an museum, the Anne Frank House, in 1960. by then, Anne`s life story had become widely familiar around the world, establishing her as the most known victim of Nazi persecution. Today, when people read Anne`s diary or visit the building in which most of it was written, they not only encounter an extraordinary work, created during the Holocaust. They also discover that they are joining a vast international body of this book`s readers. there is much to learn from the story of this young woman amid the terrible times in which she lived and died. In addition, the wealth of responses that Anne Frank has inspired is itself instructive, revealing the many possibilities of finding meaning at this powerful confluence of remembrance and imagination.

100th Birthday of J.D.Salinger

                         A little more than seven months ago, precisely on 1st January, the writer J.D.Salinger would complete 100 years-old, so this is my tribute to this important writer. His books were the early influence of the called "counterculture movement". This movement wanted broaden popular culture with less censorship, hipocrisy and standards, a more spontaneous, real, natural and human existence.  This post is a summary of five articles. The first published at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Salinger.The second was published at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/01/catcher-in-the-rye_n_4524045.html. The third was published at http://www.gradesaver.com/the-catcher-in-the-rye/study-guide/major. The fourth was published athttps://www.thedailybeast.com/jd-salinger-at-100-forever-young-forever-influential. The fifth was published at https://blog.gale.com/once-upon-an-author-j-d-salingers-100th-birthday/

             Jerome David Salinger ( 1919-2010 ) was an American writer raised in Manhattan and that began writing stories while in high school. After he went to study literature and writing at Columbia University.  In World War II, due to his proficiency in French and German he worked to a counter-intelligence division. After the war his writings started to be published in The New Yorker magazine. By the late 1940s, he become an avid follower of Zen Buddhism. In 1951, his novel  "The Catcher in the Rye" was an immediate popular success. His depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence was influential. The novel remains widely read and controversial. The success of The Catcher in the Rye led to public attention and scrutiny. Salinger became reclusive. Another great success was the short story, "Franny and Zooey" published in 1961. He died at 91 years-old of natural causes on January 2010, at his home in New Hampshire state, USA. He left one son and one daughter. His energetic, realistically sparse dialogue, was revolutionary at the time were published. Salinger identified closely with his characters, and used techniques such as interior monologue and extended telephone calls. Salinger`s writings has influenced several prominent writers: Harold Brodkey, John Updike, Philip Roth and Richard Yates said about his influence. 

             The famous reclusive author, known for penning "The Catcher in the Rye" and  "Franny and Zooey", has been in the spotlight more than he probably would have liked this year, due to the release of a biography, and the leaking of three of his unpublished stories. We would like to revisit why, we cherish the memory of Salinger. Though his most famous work, "The Catcher in the Rye", is often shrugged off as relatable only to angsty, insufferable teens, it is withstood the test of time. Sure, it is the "great American high school novel." Here are five things this novel can teach you about life, even if your prom-going days are far behind you. 1) You are not alone in your frustations - Holden spends the bulk of the book complaining. Still, his frustations and grievances can help readers to understand that they are not the only one coping with problems.  2) Social niceties are not always phony - he feels he must act in accordance with social norms, that they exist for a reason. He does not have the best attitude about niceties, but he acknowledge that, at times, they can be important. 3) Excellent writing can transport you - Holden is a big reader, and he describe the pleasure he takes in reading in the book.  4) Growing up means channeling your frustations towards something productive - when Holden visits Mr.Antolini, he borrows this quote from Wihelm Stekel. "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."  5) Beauty is rare, and worth holding onto - though Holden often is unhappy with his interactions with others, he does cherish the company of his chosen mentors, his close friends and his family. He also values books and museums, and other means of preserving special  and beautiful moments.

             Perhaps the greatest theme of the novel involves the relationship between the pain of actual experiences and the equally devastating numbness that comes with shutting down emotions in order to avoid suffering. Holden, it seems, is in the throes of an existential crisis. Another theme is love and sex, Holden is a deep, sensitive soul, but he has this suspicion that every relationship he have eventually deteriorates. Even in the presence of a prostitute, he can not think only in sex, he want to have a conversation in the hope of feeling some glimmer of human affection with her. Loss of innocence is a theme when Holden realizes that maturity entails its loss, greater knowledge of oneself and others and the circumstances all comes with a price. Innocence goes with idealism and a certain inability or unwillingness to accept the harsher reality. Holden labels almost everyone a phony, in his eyes, is a person who embraces the superficial demands of the world and tries to make something out of nothing. Holden understand one of the most profound truths of life: superficial matters little because it will not last.
              New year`s Day 2019 would have been the 100th birthday of J.D.Salinger. It`s a milestone worth celebrating because Salinger`s literary voice remains young. Salinger is no longer as popular as he once was, but with the passage of time, his impact has become clearer. From Sylvia Plath`s The Bell Jar to Frank Conroy`s Stop Time.
                 January 2019, marked what would have been J.D.Salinger`s 100th birthday. Salinger died in 2010, having secured his place in literary history and American culture in 1951 with the publication of his novel The Catcher in the Rye. The work was a bestseller, and changed the way many young readers felt about literature. The book endures as a popular, commonly studied work of literature. The novel is still widely taught in high school classrooms. Though sales estimates vary, recent figures suggest that has sold over 68 million copies in its lifetime.