From 7 to 14 August 2024, the CYRILLA Global Policy Advocacy Workshop was held virtually. Activists and practitioners from Asia, Africa, LAC, and MENA joined the event in two batches from different time zones. This was a useful capacity-building opportunity for digital rights defenders to strengthen their skills in advocacy in international spaces to expand the horizon of digital rights. Bytesforall Bangladesh with its long record of working on digital rights participated the event.
The major objectives of the workshop were to enable collaboration within and amongst digital rights communities across regions, to learn to develop effective and responsive advocacy strategies at the international level for participants, and to understand better how CYRILLA can aid advocacy practitioners in these efforts.
Global experts facilitated the sessions introducing global policy advocacy, the legal framework for global advocacy, UN and other spaces for digital rights advocacy, and strategies for effective engagement. Participants through several exercises practised the learning during the workshop as a group and between sessions, individually.
Experts who facilitated the sessions are: Maria Paz Canales, a Chilean Lawyer currently heading Legal, Policy and Research at Global Partners Digital (GPD); Sheetal Kumar, an independent Consultant with expertise in internet governance, human rights and digital technology policy; Anriette Esterhuysen, and APC Associate and a Senior Advisor on internet governance and Convenor of African School on Internal Governance; and Gayatri Khandhadai, Head of Technology and Human Rights at Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.
Through the workshop, participants became familiarised with spaces and mechanisms of international advocacy that can be leveraged to promote digital rights. And joined a platform for meaningful engagement to discuss the development of effective advocacy strategies at the international level and an opportunity for cross-regional connections for more impactful advocacy work.
Alternatives when national spaces are shrunk, and mechanisms are ineffective:
In the present-day world, increasingly the digital rights advocates are facing the challenge of
shrinking spaces at national levels. Thus, the need of exploring UN and other global and
regional spaces becoming relevant for them. In a session, during the recent CYRILLA
Workshop, these alternatives were discussed and debated.
Everyone agreed that we need to understand first the relationship of respective states with
the relevant UN agencies. In some cases, the state declined to become a party to certain
universal legal standards and norms. In other, even they are a party to it, they ignore their
obligations under it, and do not abide by their commitments. Sometime, the system itself is
complicated.
Before thinking about utilizing these alternatives it is important to know the jurisdiction and
mandate of available spaces and mechanisms. UN General Assembly, Security Council,
ECOSOC, along several UN agencies like UNDP, UNEP, UNCTAD, HRC, UN Women, ILO,
ITU, OHCHR, ICJ, and UNIDIR – who are mandated for different issues like development
(economic, social, and political), environment, science and technology, disarmament etc.
UN system also has a useful mechanism for states to report back periodically about their
respective human rights, peace, and security situations – naming Universal Periodic Review.
Each state is obliged to periodically submit reports to the relevant agency regarding the
relevant thematic issue. Global-level reputed professionals are part of the review of these
reports and sharing feedback and recommendations to respective states.
There are also spaces for developing policies like OECD, and for networking like National
and Regional IGFs, World Economic Forum, RightsCon, IFEX, and the Digital Rights
Inclusion Forum. There are regional telecoms regulatory association like REGULATEL, and
inter-governmental organisations like ASEAN, APEC, OAS, SAARC, or Council of Europe.
Among the regional human rights bodies there are IACHR, ACHPR, and for industry and
business spaces WEF, ICANN, IETF, LACNIC, and GSMA Mobile for Development
Conference.
Activists to remain vigilant when there are calls for submissions on reports, conference
papers, public gatherings, or UN Special Rapporteur reports. They should be well-known
about the Universal Periodic Review process, and different treat body reviews like HRC. But
before entering the process, they must ensure documentation with analyses, then submit
timely to the appropriate forum, monitor the progress, follow up with them, and communicate
the outcome with greater audience.
Being strategic for effective advocacy initiatives:
The workshop put stress on fixing appropriate targets to begin any advocacy processes.
This means how, why, when, and where we should engage the state and non-state actors. It
is also important to identify the communication mechanism and the ways of collaborations
with each of them as per the context and other relevant factors.
Advocates need to understand the dynamics of different UN agencies and offices. For
example, modalities and mandates of the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High
Commissioner, the ITU, or the Working Group on Business and Human Rights – each has its
own agenda and working modalities with specific spelled-out mandates. Respective states
may (or may not) have an aligned position or stand related with these forums. So, we need
understand the relationships and then determine strategically how to proceed with any.
It would be useful to have a thorough/detailed and up to date map of the stakeholders
(state/non-state actors) with analyses and insights. Non-state actors like corporate bodies,
industry networks, or certification bodies have different and diverse interests in different
situations. Among them, who functions at the global level are more complicated with a
complex mechanism to get engaged with.
There is a gap between the state/non-state actors and citizens as they usually do not
interact with each other regarding analysing each other’s needs and expectations. Not
always they are transparent enough and communicate their positions with the common
citizens. So, advocates must be careful and put efforts to understand their technicalities and
pro-actively get involved with these entities to raise and promote their issues.
There are a few key challenges that the digital rights advocates face in meaningfully
engaging the non-state actors (e.g., investors). They are access & communication, lack of
capacity & resources, lack of transparency, imbalance of power. Also, engagement with civil
society is not well-designed and executed effectively, in general.
Thus, the advocates should establish who they are, and what are their issues. They must be
clear about who should they listen and what will be the consequences if they do not. They
should know how to describe systems and not only people, not being speculative and
backdated. Asks should be specific and clear based on data-analysis-evidence, as placed.
(Written by: Fayaz Ahmed
Photo credit: Cathy Chen from the APC comms team)