What Can Social Media Do For Human Rights ?

               This post is a summary of two articles. The first with the incomplete title above was published at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/what-can-social-media-platforms-do-for-human-rights/.The second publishe at https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/InternetFreedom.aspx

              Social media such as Twitter and Facebook have become essential to free expression in the digital age. From the Arab Spring to Turkey, to major electoral reform rallies, we've seen how movements around the world have used internet-based platforms to communicate, organize, and share critical information that impacts their lives. Now that platforms like Facebook have billions of users, the decisions that social media companies make impact free expression on a global scale. Social media platforms are increasingly where people connect with other online. As such, security agencies, especially in repressive countries, often rely on social media to force people, members of minority groups. journalists, activists, and others to reveal their social networks. With one password, sometimes revealed under torture, government authorities can clamp down on entire communities. Many human rights organizations have worked with platforms like Facebook to develop mechanisms to ensure the safety and security of people who are arrested and detained. At Access, our Digital Security Helpline works with platforms to help secure the social media accounts of users when it is necessary to protect human rights and safeguard communities. However, these platforms don't get it right all of the time. For example, Twitter is without a doubt one of the most important platforms for information in the 21st century. Yet Twitter revoked access to its API for the Netherlands-based Open State Foundation, which in 2010 created Politwoops, a valuable tool that lets the public see Tweets deleted by politicians. Another example is Facebook, which has run into trouble with its real name policy, which requires you to use your real name when you set up an account on Facebook, which negatively impacts huamn rights defenders, journalists, activists, and others. Through our work fighting for digital rights across the globe, we have heard, for example, that several Vietnamese writers and activists were flagged en masse, and disallowed from using pen names on Facebook. One activist, a mother with two sons in prison, had been using her Facebook account to campaign for their release. Every one of these activists were asked to verify their identities. Facebook unilaterally altered their accounts to list their legal names. Years of important and anonymous activism became  instantly linked with people's identities. 'Prohibition of anonymity online interferes with the right to freedom of expression. This encompasses the full exercise of the right to freedom of expression: the right to seek, receive, and impart information. Many at-risk users rely on Facebook to fulfill all three of these important precepts. But when people are forced to reveal their real identity their ability to exercise that right is threatened and their lives are placed in danger. Fortunately, European law already prohibits the use of real name policies. But the rest of the world is not so fortunate. We know that it is possible for tech companies to take the concerns of civil society seriously and not only respond to reasonable requests to improve their platforms, but also to take a proactive approach. As global internet platforms seek to expand further into our lives, we've seen worrying attacks on the Silicon Valley commitment to support freedom of expression. Policy decisions by tech companies affect expression on a mass scale. Civil society has constructive solutions. All that is required is for social media platforms to continue to listen, and to act.

            "I had no words to add, I just sat down for some minutes. I felt she wanted to spare me from listening, to horrors that many others preferred untold," wrote Rosebell Kagumire on her blog.  Rosebell, a human rights activist and multimedia journalist, wrote about her encounter with a woman at a medical center in northern Uganda. Rosebell's blog features commentaries and stories on political issues with a focus on women's rights in Uganda and the region. Her blog is very popular among people who are looking for an independent analysis of events not usually found in traditional media. Promoting human rights through social media, mobile communication and digital networks is not only Rosebell's objective but the goal of six other writers, bloggers and journalists, all human rights defenders in their countries, who have been nominated Internet Freedom Fellows by the U.S. Department of State. The seven activists gathered at the U.N. last June and shared their stories at a side event to the U.N. Human Rights Council entitled "The Human Voice of Freedom: The Internet and Human Rights". Along with highly experts in the field of social media, they talked about their work in protecting human rights using social media and discussed the importance of a free internet to the promotion of human rights and freedom of expression. "We have to be creative in opening up ways of communicating so that we can still get the message out," said Aung San Thar, a video journalist for the "Democratic Voice of Burma", an independent media organization promoting human rights and freedom of expression in Myanmar. In countries where the government has monopoly over the media, I work to offer alternative information and other points of view", said Henda Chennaoui, a jornalist and blogger widely followed on Facebook in Tunisia. Other Internet Freedom Fellows include Wael Abbas, a blogger and human rights activist from Egypt whose online writings have brought awareness about important human rights issues in his country; Wen Yunchao from China and Andreas Harsono, from Indonesia, prominent writer, human rights activist whose blog is particularlypopular with young users in the city of Jakarta. "Around the world people using new media in the call for freedom, transparency and greater self-determination. We must always remember that it is not the tools, but the courageous people who use them, who are the human voice of freedom," said Ambassador Eileen Donahoe, U.S. representative to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Pandemics and Human Rights

               While we all are in quarantine because of the coronavirus, why not to spend our time at home to help fight injustice and violations of human rights. Record any violation of human rights you witnessed online or offline, send your testimony to human rights organisms, NGOs or to the victims. This post is a summary of two articles. The first with the title above was published in March 2020 at   https://www.justsecurity.org/69141/pandemics-and-human-rights/. The second was published at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/19/coronavirus-pandemic-human-rights

              Pandemics are fertile breeding grounds for governmental overreach. After the outbreak of COVID-19 (coronavirus), China required citizens to install software on their smartphones which predicts people's health status, tracks their location, and determines whether they can enter a public place. Meanwhile in Kyrgyzstan, coronavirus may have been used as a justification to stifle political and social activism. Protesters recently held demonstrations seeking the release of an opposition politician in advance of upcoming parliamentary elections. Against this backdrop, a court granted the mayor's application to ban all protests in the city centre until July 1.  The court cited the coronavirus as one of the reasons for the ban. The coronavirus is indeed a significant threat to public health, As of writing, there are over 120,000 confirmed cases and the number will exponentially grow. However, as we have seen during other emergency situations, some governments use a crisis as a pretext to infringe rights. Other retain over-broad emergency powers after the crisis subsides. In the midst of an emergency, whether caused by an epidemic, terrorist attack, or otherwise, countries tend to give vast powers to the executive branch. To a certain extent, this is understandable. Therefore, emergency or not, States must reach the same threshold of legality, legitimacy, necessity and proportionality for each measure taken. While certain "social distancing" measures are appropriate, other decisions impermissibly restrict the freedom of assembly. An example is the court decision to impose a four-month ban on assemblies in Kyrgyzstan. Even though there were no confirmed cases of coronavirus in the country. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) prohibit any kind of discrimination. International law prohibit governments from forcing communities to assume discriminatory burdens after an outbreak. We are concerned by reports that Chinese authorities have forced Uighurs to work at factories previously closed due to the risk of coronavirus infection. The Chinese response to coronavirus initially focused on suppressing the reports of whistleblowers and discouraging the dissemination of information about the virus. These restrictions would appear to violate international law, which protects the right to freedom of expression and the right to seek, and impart information and ideas. A number of international instruments, including Article 25 of the ICCPR, protect the right to participate in public affairs. Moreover, engaging people in the development of strategies, policies, and practices increases the likelihood of effective responses. Government measures may also implicate a number of other rights, including the rights to life and health, the freedoms of association and movement, and the right to an effective remedy when violations occur. To promote rights-respecting governmental measures during a public health emergency: 1) Governments should provide accurate and timely information to civil society and the public about public health issues and provide opportunities for the public to participate in the design, implementation, and evaluation of responses to public health emergencies. 2) Measures should be publicly accessible and precise to enable an individual to determine what is prohibited and what is permitted.  3) Measures should be motivated by legitimate public health goals and not be used as a pretext to pursue illegitimate aims.  4) Measures should be of a limited duration with a requirement of review. 5) Governments should work with civil society to undertake a rapid human rights impact assessment to ensure that measures and actions do not inappropriately infringe fundamental freedoms.

                   I saw a private briefing from a bank, soothingly reassuring its clients that "this feels more like 9/11 than 2008". I think the point was to let investors know that this crisis is not systemic. I can think of a host of reasons why 9/11 does not bring calming thoughts to mind, but one is the long-term impact it had on human rights. Back then I was in the early stages of becoming a human rights lawyer. My very first day in court was with the team defending a victim of extraordinary rendition, where Britain had helped facilitate his torture. By the time I was practising, the 7 July london bombings had happened, and so had draconian new laws - 90 day detention without trial, plus sweeping surveillance and monitoring. Many Muslims remember this time that racial profiling and state harassment became the new normal. This might sound like a strange issue to raise when the national priority is how to stop the spread of coronavirus, treat the sick and tackle the hit to the economy. But since last month, the potential has been building for a clash between liberty, privacy and public health measures.  The legislation is likely to ban public gathering, to widen police and immigration officer powers of detention and restraint, to give doctors powers to sign death certificates without seeing the deceased person's body. Our human rights protections - long maligned by many of the politicians now running our pandemic-stricken nation - were designed for moments such as this. They contain specific exemptions for situations in which the state needs to contain the spread of infectious disease. Laywers who focus on the right to human dignity in the care of vulnerable or elderly people were appalled to hear Boris Johnson suggest that the death of vast numbers of British people would be an acceptable price to pay for so-called "herd immunity". There is the potential for a kind of tyranny of the majority - one of the reasons we need human rights in the first place - and then there are the new, established but upgraded, tyrannies of the state. 

Accountability and Abuses of Power

                 This post is a summary of the article with the incomplete title above published at   https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/rkeohane/files/apsr_abuses.pdf

                 The interdependence of states, globalization. expansion of the scope of multilateral organizations, and rapid increases in the number of NGOs have heightened concerns about the way power is used and abused. A crucial feature of representative democracy is that those who govern are held accountable to the governed. Mechanisms for appropriate accountability need to be institutionalized. We seek to suggest pragmatic improvements in accountability mechanisms. Our analysis considers accountability as only one of several ways in which power can be constrained and scrutinizes the analogy between global and domestic power structures in order to specify the nature of the problem of accountability in global politics more clearly. Accountability mechanisms always operate after the fact: exposing actions to view, judging and sanctioning them. Of course, though they always operate ex post, accountability mechanisms can exert effects ex ante, since the anticipation of sanctions may deter the powerful from abusing their position in the first place. At a minimum, institutions of governance should limit and constrain the potential for abuse of power. The problem of abuse of power is serious in world politics, because even the minimal types of constraints found in domestic governments are absent on the global level. Not only there is not global democracy, but there is not even an effective constitutional system that constrains power in an institutionalized applicable rules. Thus, our focus in this article is on the role of accountability mechanisms in world politics. What kinds of accountability mechanisms are likely to be effective in constraining international organizations? How can understanding accountability at the level of the nation-state clarify the problem of accountability at the global level?  High levels of participation in politics and in governing institutions are considered highly desirable and serve as a direct accountability mechanism. Representatives and officeholders need to be called to account by the governed, who can have some control over the decisions that affect their lives through political participation. Democratic elections are examples of both accountability through participation and accountability through judging the performance of one. Thus the process of democratic elections can be endorsed readily as an effective mechanism for accountability. This convergence, however, convenient in the context of democracies, does not apply in contemporary world politics. In order for a global public to function politically, there would need to be some political structure that would help to define who was entitled to participate, and on what issues. In addition, many more people would have to identify transnationally and be willing to participate as members of a global public. Another way of making this point would be to say that world politics to day lacks a public in two distinct senses. In democratic nations, the existence of a clearly defined public provides the responses to the fundamental questions about accountability. The public is entitled to hold power-wielders accountable in a democratic nation for abuses of power. On the global level, there is not public that can function in this way, to provide answers to the fundamental questions about accountability. This is the crucial difference between problems of accountability globally and domestically. Increased domestic democracy can be an important form of participation in global politics. Of course, domestic democracy can improve accountability to citizen and, at the same time, work against policies beyond states borders. It follows that power-wielders may be held accountable to standards of conduct articulated in transnational civil society, even though their power does not derive from authority delegated to them. In international law, those entities that are neither states nor international organizations are subject to the laws of the states possessing jurisdiction. Human rights treaties constitute obvious examples: states and their leaders can be held accountable for violations. The standards of legitimacy against which power-wielders can be held accountable derive primarily from three sets of informal norms. First, legitimacy derives from conformity to human rights norms that are widely shared by the public of the most powerful states in the global political system. Second, there has been increased agreement that many normative principles inherent in democracy are applicable at the global level. Third, there has been intense normative pressure on the patterns of extreme economic inequality that permeate the contemporary global political economy. The question,  "Who is entitled to hold power-wielders accountable for abuses?" receives a variety of answers in the practice of global politics. We have identified seven accountability mechanisms that actually operate in world politics on the basis of which improved practices of accountability could be built. Some operate most effectively when standards of legitimacy are formally encoded in law. Others enforce less formal norms. Four of these mechanisms rely heavily on delegation: hierarchical, supervisory, fiscal, and legal accountability. The remaining three: market, peer, and reputational accountability, involve forms of participation, although the participants in each of these forms of accountability are different. Hierarchical accountability is a characteristic of bureaucracies, as we use the term applies to relationships within organizations, including multilateral organizations such as United Nations or the World Bank. Supervisory accountability refers to relations between organizations where one acts as principal with respect to specified agents. Fiscal accountability describes mechanisms through which funding agencies can demand reports from, and ultimatelysanction, agencies that are recipients of funding. This form of accountability was fundamental to the emergence of parliamentary power in England during the seventeenth century and is particularly important for international organizations, which rely on governments to fund substantial parts of their activities. Legal accountability refers to the requirement that agents abide by formal rules and be prepared to justify their actions in those terms, in courts or quasijudicial arenas. Public officials, like anyone else, can be "held accountable" for their actions both through administrative and criminal law. Legal accountability has long been important in democracies and has become increasingly important during recent years. Market accountability is a less familiar category, but an important one. We want to emphasize that this form of accountability is not to an abstract force, but to investors and consumers, whose influence is exercised in whole or in part through markets. Investors may stop investing in countries. Consumers may refuse to buy products from companies with bad reputation. Peer accountability arises as the result of mutual evaluation of organizations by their counterparts. NGOs for example, organizations that are poorly rated by their peers are likely to have difficult in persuading them to cooperate, and therefore to have trouble achieving their own purposes. Public reputational accountability is pervasive because reputation is involved in all the other forms of accountability. Reputation is a form of "soft power," defined as "the ability to shape the preferences of others." This category applies to situation in which reputation, widely and publicly known, provides a mechanism for accountability even in the absence of other mechanisms as well as in conjunction with them.