Bytesforall Bangladesh participated as an observer in a 4-day workshop on ‘Advancing Our Digital Rights Agenda for Asia’ organized by Association for Progressive Communications (APC) from 28 June to 2 July 2021. The workshop was attended by 23 participants from APC’s members and partners from Taiwan, South Korea, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal, India and Pakistan. The workshop was designed to familiarise civil society working on digital rights issues with international advocacy and its ecosystem, as a way to encourage more organisations to engage into these spaces. Fayazuddin Ahmad represented Bytesforall Bangladesh and prepared this report.
The event started with the introduction to international advocacy. This session was facilitated by Paula Martins, the human rights policy advocacy lead at APC. There was agreement that it was hard to classify advocacy as simply good or bad; it is often complex and multilayered, with different degrees of expectations and views of what the intended outcomes should be. It was discussed that international advocacy can be very effective as a boomerang effect for creating momentum for national causes and issues. When pursued by civil society, it can also help international law reflect ground realities. It is important to remember that advocacy takes time and requires rigorous monitoring and a learning approach, and every small milestone is a success!
The second session of the day was stakeholder mapping and understanding the landscape, facilitated by Verengai Mabika, the senior policy advisor of the Global Public Policy Team at Internet Society, Zimbabwe. The session revealed that multi-stakeholderism attempts to ensure that private sectors, civil societies, governments, academia and media can work together on shared principles and norms on matters related to internet policy. However, in practice, this often is limited to just communication and coordination, and no hard decisions. There is also a very serious concern about how different stakeholders are represented in multi-stakeholder forums and the power dynamics that are inherent in the model.
The 2nd day of the workshop focused specifically on some of the instruments, spaces and mechanisms available to engage in international advocacy, particularly at the United Nations for leveraging international advocacy. In the session led by Sheetal Kumar of Global Partners Digital, the participants discussed the treaties, instruments and standards as starting points for international advocacy. International agreements that have an impact on human rights around the world were also discussed, including the Rabat Plan of Action and the UN General Assembly Resolution on Emerging Technologies.
The discussions of the day continued as Deborah Brown of Human Rights Watch shared an overview of the UN ecosystem in which she zeroed in on the ways that UN spaces can be used to advocate for digital rights and which spaces will be the most strategic ones to bring this advocacy to. Participants discussed the different spaces at the UN including the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council (HRC), the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, the Commission on the Status of Women, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and various specialised agencies.
Sarah Brooks of the International Service for Human Rights led the last session of the day, which focused on engaging with human rights mechanisms at the UN. Sarah spoke about the HRC, Special Procedures at the UN, the treaty bodies and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process. Differences between the HRC and the UN Security Council was discussed and it was explained that the Security Council mainly deals with issues of peace and security and can mobilise an intervention into a country, but its actions can be vetoed among its members.
3rd day of the workshop covered presentations and discussion on advocacy spaces like the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and technical spaces like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and International Telecommunication Union (ITU) from the perspective of how they function, and the last session speaking to the experience of civil society as they engage in them.
During her presentation on Internet Governance and Digital Cooperation, Anriette Esterhuysen, the senior advisor on internet governance, policy advocacy and strategic planning at APC and chair of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group of the IGF, invited participants to reflect on how they viewed multistakeholder internet governance. These spaces can be sites of struggle, but they are also important, and a way for civil society to get out of its echo chambers. It is, therefore, necessary to analyse and get involved with the design of each multistakeholder process, so that it can be better used for our advocacy. The IGF is one such space that provides an opportunity for civil society to engage with governments, businesses, media, academics and the technical community.
Avri Doria, an individual member of APC and an ICANN Board member facilitated the session on telecom and internet infrastructure advocacy. This session covered technical spaces that govern internet policy, such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), ICANN and the ITU, which are not often navigated by civil society and where there is sometimes limited consideration for human rights. There is a need to bridge this gap, but lack of technical knowledge among civil society can be a barrier. However, this need not always be the case and some knowledge can go a long way. The majority of participants agreed that tech is not neutral, but rather, it is coded with the biases of its creators. This is also why it is so critical for civil society to be present and advocate in technical spaces, as a way to challenge these biases.
During the final session of the day on policy advocacy to policy change, Carlos Rey-Moreno, the local access and community networks (LocNet) policy and regulation coordinator at APC, joined the workshop for an interview-style discussion, to speak to participants about his experience advocating for changes to telecom regulatory policy to enable community networks. Carlos explained, there have been a lot of challenges, from obvious vested interests of stakeholders like governments and businesses, to back-channel agreements that undermine previously negotiated positions, often seeming like one step forward, two steps back.
The final day had two sessions, first on integrating gender into the global digital rights agenda and strategies for effective engagement. During the first session, Pooja Badrinath, Advocacy Advisor for the Sexual Rights Initiative highlighted the importance to acknowledge that the internet is being used in a broader environment of widespread and systemic structural discrimination and gender-based violence against women and girls, which frame their access to and use of the Internet and other ICT. She discussed the challenges that women and girls face regarding access and use of internet-based services. She also discussed the opportunities to engage with different global platforms promoting women and girls improved internet access.
In the final session Gayatri Khandhadai, Asia Policy Regional Coordinator at APC opened the floor to discuss what the participants can do with the knowledge and information gained during the workshop; how can they do what they decide; whom should they engage with; who can help them; and developing a strategy for this. She also discussed different values (e.g. credibility, consistency, security) that the participants need to understand, adopt and nurture. Then different actions (i.e. mediums of advocacy actions) were discussed.