FOAA rights in the digital age

The report focuses on the opportunities and challenges confronting the right to peaceful assembly and association in the digital age. In it, the Special Rapporteurs advised on how to best safeguard and maximize these opportunities and address said threats and provided recommendations to this end.

The digital age has opened up a completely new space for the enjoyment of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, bringing a wealth of previously inaccessible opportunities to individuals and civil society actors looking to assemble and associate online or form communities.

A space with unprecedented challenges and risks

But it is also a space which presents unprecedented challenges and risks. The digital space is increasingly subject to undue control, restrictions and surveillance by both States and by powerful internet giants who act as the space’s dominant gatekeepers. The Special Rapporteur has observed how, over the past decade, States  – and malicious third-party actors – have used technology to silence, surveil and harass dissidents, political opposition, human rights defenders, activists and protesters, and to manipulate public opinion.

Governments are ordering Internet shutdowns more frequently, as well as blocking websites and platforms ahead of critical democratic moments such as elections and protests. New emerging technologies such as AI and the Internet of Things are still developing, and we face an increasingly digital future which will bring with it further challenges to the protection of freedom of peaceful assembly and association (FoAA) rights.

The Special Rapporteur outlined the notion that the freedom to peaceful assembly and association everywhere is protected through international laws and standards and stressed that these protections apply to the online arena of civil society space in the same manner as they do elsewhere.

Existing international human rights norms and principles should not only dictate State conduct in the digital arena, but also be the framework that guides digital technology companies’ design, control and governance of digital technologies.”

UNSR Voule called on States to implement said international laws that protect the rights covered by his mandate in national legislation. He also called on digital technological companies to commit to respecting these laws in order to enable the full enjoyment of these rights in the digital arena through technologies of today or through technologies that will be invented in the future.

In fulfilling their respective responsibilities, States and digital technology companies should comply with well-established principles of non-discrimination, pluralism of views, transparency, multi-stakeholder participation, and access to justice”.

This report (A/HRC/41/41) was submitted by Special Rapporteur Clément Voule to the Human Rights Council at its 41^st forty-first session.

Read the full report (A/HRC/41/41) in all UN languages here.