On Thursday, July 5, the UN Human Rights Council passed a landmark
resolution that recognizes the right to freedom of expression online, and calls
upon states to promote Internet access as fundamental to the exercise of civic
rights.
“The same rights that people have
offline must also be protected online,” noted the Council, the UN’s main human
rights body, as civic and political rights are “applicable regardless of
frontiers.” Frontiers that were once conceived as borders between countries are
now understood as barriers to access – namely, to that global sphere of
knowledge commonly known as the Internet.
DEBATE & DISSENT: The Internet, a ‘Human Right’?
As the Council met in Geneva,
Swedish Ambassador Jan Knutsson sought to persuade states to back the bill,
reiterating the Internet’s capacity for positive social and cultural
development.
“It is clear that the Internet
and information technologies have been key in changing people’s lives – making
them less vulnerable and reducing poverty,” he argued – the implications of
which are egalitarian, and democratic. “The openness of the Internet levels the
playing field between regions and continents.”
And yet, how might more
censorious states support any such proposal which gives greater impetus to free
expression online? China, Russia, and Cuba in particular raised concerns that
unfettered rights online would do little to curb cybercrime and other
“negative” developments.
Chinese Ambassador Xia Jingge
said that he’d hoped “the sponsors (would) consider the differences in views…
(regarding) freedom of speech, and control of the Internet, amongst the
different countries”, since:
(China) believes that the free
flow of information on the Internet, and the safe flow of information on the
Internet, is mutually dependent. As the Internet develops rapidly, online
gambling, pornography, fraud and hacking are increasing its threat to the legal
rights of the society and the public, particularly the unhealthy information
have a huge negative impact on the growth of minors.
The governments of the world are
duty bound to fight against such crime, to guarantee the safe flow of
information on the Internet, to guide the public to use the public – to run the
Internet – legally. Otherwise, unhealthy and negative information flow will
obstruct the development of the Internet.
Yet China, along with more than
80 countries, including 30 members of the council, would sign on to co-sponsor
the non-binding resolution.
“It is an important step in determining
how to incorporate new electronic frontiers into the established body of
international human rights agreements,” noted rights institute Freedom House.
“It also firmly establishes the global acceptance of the principle of free
expression on the Internet, even if its application has yet to be fully
realized.”
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