FINISHED TRANSCRIPT
EIGHTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
BALI
BUILDING BRIDGES ‑ ENHANCING MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER COOPERATION FOR GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
OCTOBER 22, 2013
9:00 A.M
SESSION WS 134
CONNECTING OUR RIGHTS: STRATEGIES FOR PROGRESS
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication access realtime translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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>> CHAT GARCIA: Hello. We are just giving a little bit of time for people to ‑‑ you know to get here. Maybe people are still, you know, getting their photos taken and registering and they'll trickle in. In one or two minutes, we'll begin the session. So you can still check your email, send your messages.
Hello. Before I start, I would like to welcome you all. In Indonesian, you say... selamat datang, and I wish you good morning and that's selamat pagi. So you now have three Indonesian. My name is Chat Garcia. And we are one of the organisers for this workshop, together with the women's legal bureau and the Swedish government.
Welcome, everyone to this session. As you know, the session is "Connecting Our Rights, Strategies for Progress." We are looking at the impact of Internet Governance, especially around the recent developments of UN human rights mechanisms.
Just by way of background by 2013, more than a dozen United Nations, human rights mechanisms had included Internet‑related human rights within their work and this is an increase from only one or two mechanisms in late 2010. Human rights defenders focused on women's rights mechanisms, including the mission and status of women, and the committee for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women.
And the right to freedom of expression, the Special Rapporteur On Freedom of Expression have been leading their way in bringing Internet rights and freedom issues to main stream human rights mechanisms. So you will see how from just the Internet rights, you know, this world that we are in, it's moving much more main stream, no?
This work has gathered momentum and expanding rapidly as the mechanisms begin to initiate investigations and make policy recommendations that are directly relevant to Internet public policymakers.
For example, the UN Human Rights Council Expert Panel On Freedom of Expression on the Internet and other follow‑up work to Frank LaRue's work has seen an increase from 14 to 85 in the countries supporting UN resolutions. Such a big jump, 14 countries to 85, support the UN resolutions on freedom of expression and the Internet. We noted an increase from 13 to more than 40 in the number of references to Internet rights in the human rights review processes of the universal periodic review. You know, it's another human rights mechanism.
The 2012 report of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, intolerance, the report is entitled "Racism and the Internet" which was largely unnoticed by many public policy commentators, it's devoted to racism and the internet, looking at key trends, challenges, legal frameworks, international, regional and national initiatives and this draws explicitly from the work on the Special Rapporteur on the freedom of expression and you will see it's moving in different spaces.
So this report considers the role of Internet imageries of civil society in light of the Durban Program for Action. Two weeks from today, as a follow‑up to this report, and in order to deepen the history search on this issue, the Special Rapporteur is convening an expert consultation on precisely this topic. As well, women's human rights mechanisms are also increasingly especially on the Internet. The UN working group on discrimination against women in law and public life, in its initial report and in the section on violence against women, cited that for women who engage in public debate through the Internet, the risk of harassment is experienced online and they made recommendations around increasing women's literacy, supporting them and improving women's access to the global governance of the Internet.
The implications of this new recommendations for Internet public policy and Internet Governance, this is what we want to investigate and has to be examined within the IGF. As you all know, I mean, especially those attending IGF and similar human rights issues, following human rights issues, previous IGF workshops have focused on specific rights and freedom, such as access, freedom of expression or sexual rights. Building on these workshops and as well, you know, last year, the 2012 IGF human rights round table, what we want to do is to focus on the new developments, consider trends and likely progress and trajectory. Where do we want to bring this? How do we connect our rights so that it's not just internet rights?
We hope that outcomes from this discussion will contribute to thinking about strategies for effective monitoring, and accountability for Internet rights violations, both national, hopefully also in regional and international levels.
So we are answering several questions in this forum. What are the main themes of Internet‑related human rights issues? What are the key strategies in actions to responding to these things? How can conflicting rights such as for example, women's rights, freedom of expression which we are seeing much more, how can they be best balanced? This ‑‑ the courses have actually been going on in different UN spaces, you know? What are the emerging governance mechanisms for entering human rights on the Internet. How can the stakeholders respect, and promote and protect human rights in related Internet policy. There are more questions and you hope that from you all, you also will bring questions and also ideas and your own thoughts around this issue.
So we have our four panelists and they bring ‑‑ they will bring different perspectives. To my ‑‑ and I will call them in the order in how they will speak. To my left is Jelen Paclarin. Jelen Paclarin is a lawyer and she's from the women's legal bureau in the Philippines. Women's human rights defenders who have been working on these issues for many years. To my right is Kamilia Manaf. Kamilia is from Indonesia and we are very happy to have her to have a local voice, who we have been working for and she's from the Institute Talimpu. She will tell you what that means.
And then we have Johan Hallenborg from the Government of Sweden from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and finally, Joy Liddicoat who is also from the Association of Progressive Communications.
So we will give them about seven minutes hereby for their thoughts on this issue and then after that, we will open the floor. So Jelen.
>> JELEN PACLARIN: Good morning. I'm from the Philippines. So basically, I will be sharing with you our issues in the Philippines and how we were able to bring some of these issues to different human rights mechanisms, our regional bodies at the same time. So with emergence of ICT also comes the alarming proliferation of technology‑related violence that greatly stigmatizes and targets women. So when we were ‑‑ when we did our report to the UN Rights Council early last year. One of the main concerns we brought to our government and to the Human Rights Council was the emergence of ICT related violence against women.
It was accepted and taken into consideration by the government but it was taken as a protectionist. After the universal periodic review, came the passage of our anti‑cybercrime law which basically provided a definition that's very broad, vague and it will eventually harm women. One of the most contentious issues that we challenge in the Philippines at the time was the inclusion of cyber sex as a content‑related offense in our cybercrime act in last year.
So what do we mean? What the government means when they say cyber sex. It's the willful, maintenance, control or operation, directly or indirectly of any lascivious, of sexual organ with the aid of a computer system for a favor or consideration. With that kind of definition, this was challenged by women organisations including our organisations and questioning the constitutionality and the definition of the cybercrime law.
There are other organisations working on Internet rights that also supported the claim of women's rights groups. I would say with the vigilance of the women's groups and other groups as well, Internet rights, and those working on ICT, the questioning of this law was brought to the Supreme Court and it was in temporary restraining order until now. So those, including Section 5 which is on cyber sex, it's in temporary restraining order and now it's in the process of reviewing ‑‑ or revising the law because of its content.
Aside from erasing the ICT‑related vow in the universal periodic review, we ‑‑ we have been raising this also to the Committee On the Status of Women for the Committee On the Status of Women to recognize why ICT‑related vow should be part of the context of violence against women. One of the main issues that the Philippine groups when they went to New York early this year, was to include or to broaden the definition of violence against women and that just focuses on what is happening offline, but also recognizing that there's violence that's happening online.
I would say with the help of other women's groups like APC and other women's groups as well, I think there were significant changes in the Committee On the Status of Women's outcome document, wherein they refer to ICT as one of the main concern of the declaration.
Another thing that we've been raising also was with the committee on the ‑‑ with the CEDAW where basically they came up with a general recommendation and access to justice. Early this year, but one of the main recommendations that we had to the CEDAW was to look into context of ICT by ratifying what they mean by access to justice. Of course, this is still in the process of finalizing the general recommendations on access to justice, but we are hoping with the submission, with our submission, they will be able to consider that when we speak of access to justice, that it's not only confined with the offline context, but also the online context.
Since the Philippines is part of ASEAN, another area of concern that we have been doing is influencing the language of the ASEAN human rights commission and even as ASEAN bodies. It's ASEAN master plan or ASEAN connectivity plan which it intends to connect all southeast Asian countries in terms of roads in, terms of ports, in terms of air space and ICT.
One of the strategies that I will be focusing on is on the strategy, number 6 which is to accelerate the development of ICT infrastructures and services in each of the ASEAN Member States.
What is the main objective of this ASEAN connectivity plan? They wanted to have a robust ICT infrastructure in tandem with better human resources and regulatory environment which is critical for enabling ICT as an engine of trade, economic growth, innovation, better governance in the ASEAN region. But, of course we have to recognize that ASEANs access ‑‑ access of ASEAN member countries with the Internet or with the ICT vow, especially in urban and rural area.
The digital divide needs to be reduced in order to narrow the development gaps within the region. So what are the opportunities here? One is for ASEAN member state or for CSOs like us to look into this plan, to influence the governments of ASEAN, the ASEAN Member States and to ensure that those partnerships with private institutions will not eventually hamper the rights of the ASEAN people but contribute to the real human rights and the real development that we are looking for.
At the end of the day, we would like to say that when we speak of women's rights, we are not just talking of women's rights, protectionism. We are referring to what do we mean by substantive equality, as enshrined in the CEDAW. When we speak of equality, we are speaking of equality and access, equality in opportunities and equality in results. We want a law that will eventually protect women but at the same time, also recognizing the capacities of women. Women are not victims. Women are ‑‑ they also have power. Women have capacities. Women have strategies to come up with the concerns that they are facing.
Principals of substantive equality must be taken into consideration when the ASEAN Member States, the Philippine government, in particular, will identify their programs and responses to abuse and challenges faced by women and the Internet. Programs for women empowerment must be present, and provide an enabling environment for women to participate fully both online and offline.
Thank you.
(Applause).
>> CHAT GARCIA: Thank you, Jelen. So I think you are sort of drawing already from the national to the regional. So we will build on that, and see where the ‑‑ more and more where the connections are.
Can I call on Kamilia?
>> KAMILIA MANAF: Good morning, everybody. My name is Kamilia Manaf. I would like to talk more about for Indonesian context, it relates to Internet rights and women's rights and Internet Governance. So basically for Indonesia context, our government already ratified a convention on elimination and discrimination against women. On law number 7 in 1984. And then actually Indonesian constitution, in 1945, one of the content mentioned that citizens has the rights to access technology for human welfare. So it's actually a quite strong statement or a policy that can be used by Indonesian society about their rights for Internet and ICT.
But in the implementation that we found out several cases actually, there are violation of Internet rights related to women's rights and LGBT. For example, there's one case in a ‑‑ did by a police and journalists would spread a naked picture of women's prisoner in 2012, and it's the violation of her privacy and women's rights and then she has the right to not experience violence as ‑‑ even if she's a prisoner and it was a big issue during that time, and we as a society, we don't know how the stray, that time, how do you want to challenge that issue? How do you want to protest and if you want to ‑‑ because it's related to the police institution, as we think that they should be the law enforcement institution.
And then since 2011, actually, there are blockage case, related to LGBT. We found out from 2011 until right now, there are more, and more LGBT sites which are brought blockage. And then if you see on the screen, they say that LGBT site has content of pornography content. So they consider LGBT as pornography which is actually, what we ‑‑ relate to the entire pornography law in 2008. One of the content on this law mentioned that, specifically, that LGBT are any kind of major publication from LGBT are discriminate because they consider LGBT as sexuality or specialty.
So as you can see from the law and the ratification of CEDAW that I mentioned at the very beginning is not connected to what ‑‑ what is on the implementation on the field. So our strategy right now that we are trying to get international support and also the local support, that's how we actually connected with Association for Progressive Communication with APC. So we have a program for erotics. Basically what we are doing right now is how do we want to do the resource, and how do we look at women's rights and sexual rights. We are doing the research right now and also we got a response from the national commission on human rights how to respond if this issue is important because Internet rights ‑‑ because it's not yet become an agenda on their institutions. So she feels it's important to bring several cases that I mentioned before into the high‑level meeting of national commission on human rights which is, I think ‑‑ that is right now one of the ‑‑ our strategy to work with the government body in Indonesia.
And also, of course, we are trying to build a network in collaboration with women's rights and LGBT rights organisation and also human rights organisation, how we can work together to ‑‑ to challenge the issues.
And also, I think, what important right now, there's a big issue that while we are also fighting for our rights, we are ‑‑ the women's rights groups are disappointed about the competition actually did by Indonesian association, it's called Miss Internet Bali. We want to bring more women leadership on Internet Governance level. We want to bring more women. We think it brings the women into the domestic field and then it's exploitation of women. It's not even, like, related to what is women and Internet and women empowerment. So we want to do something about that and then we are here to criticize that competition and that initiative because we feel that's not actually supporting the progress of women's rights and Internet rights. It's more like putting back women into the domestic area. Other than that, what is important, we have other Indonesian participants too. If my friends here want to share or speak about your experience or your discourse about the Indonesian context, I will be happy. I feel like it's a good space for us to share as the local community here in Indonesia.
So ‑‑ and I also want to share what happened actually yesterday. Actually, yesterday we already have a meeting of Indonesian society with the national human rights commission, and the follow‑up of the meeting is that she wants to bring all the voice for all the Indonesian society, to maybe a meeting with other ministry of communication and information, and I guess this forum is more about ‑‑ a discussion forum and I do hope that our struggle is actually not stuck in this forum.
Actually, after the forum, we should do more follow‑up related to this issue. I guess that's all what I am to say. Thank you very much.
>> CHAT GARCIA: Thank you, Kamilia.
(Applause).
So we see here the example of how ‑‑ I think that Kamilia and her organisation is using the national human rights mechanisms in the country and trying to bring that ‑‑ bring Internet‑related rights issues, so that when the ‑‑ you know, the definition and the issues are expanded.
So can we ask Johan?
>> JOHAN HALLENBORG: Thank you very much. My name is Johan Hallenborg and I work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Stockholm, at the department of international law and human rights where I'm doing basically freedom of expression issues and to my government and to the minister, Internet freedom has been a priority issue for a number of years. So working in this area has been a priority for me and for the government, for about four or five years.
And to us, to engage in the UN on these issues is extremely important. And it's also one of the forums that we started to work in. We started to engage with the Human Rights Council and with some assistance of other countries as well, we managed to present a resolution to the council the first time ever that the council addressed freedom of expression on the Internet, and this was done through a resolution 20/8 last year.
And this resolution basically confirms that human rights are applicable also on the Internet. And secondly, that access to the Internet is an important precondition to the enjoyment of human rights and thus, governments should encourage improved accessibility to the Internet.
So those two main features are included in the resolution.
As was pointed out earlier, we have also seen that the special mechanisms, the special procedures in the council have devoted more and more time and energy to Internet‑related issues, and this is very welcome. We see that the Special Rapporteurs increasingly have addressed issues related to the enjoyment of human rights on the Internet and this is something that we very much support.
I also believe that there is a collaboration between different Special Rapporteurs from different regions which is very encouraging. We have seen it in freedom of expression where different Rapporteurs have come together to adopt standards and adopt statements on the enjoyment of freedom of expression online. These are increasingly important, I believe.
We also see the UPR as being a new avenue for pursuing increased accountability of governments when it comes to enjoyment of human rights online. We think that the UPR process is important, but we also think that the UPR may be ‑‑ may be strengthened. We see that some of the recommendations that states put to other states are perhaps not always directed to them out of ‑‑ out of concerns for human rights but rather for political reasons. And we think this is ‑‑ this is not ‑‑ this is not so good, of course.
And we see this as something that could be improved.
We are a little bit concerned that this happens at the expense of the Treaty Bodies, that already exist for a long time. The expert bodies under the respective conventions. So we would like to see a strengthened Treaty Body system where we have the real human rights expertise.
And by not engaging thoroughly in the UPR, it risks also to lower the standards of the resolution 20/8 which is a pity.
We also see regional developments which is quite interesting when we talk about effective mechanisms. In the European context, the court in Strassburg is increasingly working on Internet‑related cases. We see jurisprudence that has a direct bearing on enjoyment of items online. We have seen cases of blocking of content. And last week a case against Estonia regarding the limbs of the freedom of expression online. I believe we will see more important jurisprudence from Strassburg.
And if we look at this globally, it's also an important issue you to strengthen the national courts, the national mechanisms when it comes to enjoyment of human rights online. But I do think there is a need to ‑‑ to build capacity. If I look at the courts in my country, I am very convinced that the knowledge among lawyers and judges in my country is not sufficiently high to be able to address the specific concerns that may arise in the online environment. So this needs to be improved.
In Sweden, we have seen recently a trend that also appears in many countries and that is increased hate speech against women online and this is something that has received a lot of attention in the media, in my country. A group of very well‑known female journalists came out in public and gave notice and gave attention to this issue and that created a lot of ‑‑ a lot of sympathy and a lot of anger as well. And I strongly believe that our law enforcement system need to be able to address these issues much more comprehensively and much more effectively. I don't generally think that we need to change the legislation. I do think that the laws we have are effective, but there is an apparent need to strengthen the enforcement of these laws. And I think that may also be the case in many other contexts and countries.
So these are a few of the observations that have from my perspective. So I will look forward to more questions. Thanks.
(Applause).
>> CHAT GARCIA: Thank you, Johan. Our speakers are really very well behaved. They are really all keeping to time. Thank you very much. I think you bring in other issues like strengthening of law enforcement, building capacity, for implementing for lawyers and judges so that then the enforcement and also the implementation of the laws can be strengthened.
So let ask Joy to add to those perspectives already because we right now have a good collection of them.
>> JOY LIDDICOAT: Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I just want to infuse the discussion on how Internet Governance issues are being discussed in these forums and how human rights defenders are using these mechanisms to take forward their issues and I think that we have seen a blossoming of the number of ‑‑ and the range of human rights mechanisms that are taking up Internet‑related issues and I think that is for several reasons. I think it's because we are seeing more violations in more places against a range of actors and by both states and business and other non‑state actors. So there's more happening and I think human rights defenders are having to strategize more and being creative and using more mechanisms.
I think that we are seeing human rights defenders predominantly not seeking new norms or new standards that are Internet related specifically, but rather I think has been alluded to earlier, an expression of how existing standards apply in relation to Internet‑related issues and I think it's really women's rights groups who have been showing great leadership here, and taking existing women's rights international law with CEDAW, but also policy under the Beijing policy for action which is, you know, was quite a difficult document to negotiate in which women's rights, activists need to really protect and defend but still be creative in arguing for rights with the net framework. And I think there's a lot that Internet rights activists can learn from that and need to support in that. And I think we need to do more.
I think that overall, the quality of consideration of Internet‑related issues by these other mechanisms, Special Rapporteur on racism, Special Rapporteur on right to cultural heritage, women's rights defenders, and so on, it's generally high. I think the only real poor quality comment from a special mechanism was by the special representative on counterterrorism in relation to mass surveillance and that seemed to be quickly amended. And I think that's good. I think it bodes well. I think it means we are getting human rights mechanisms very mindful and very careful of how their issues relate to Internet Governance. They are not necessarily calling for more relation. In relation to mass surveillance, human rights defenders are not calling for new Internet Governance mechanisms. They are not saying there's a failure of Internet Governance because of this. They are just saying how can our human rights mechanisms respond? I think that's interesting.
But I think on the whole, all of the pieces of this picture are not greater than the sum of their parts. So we don't really see ‑‑ we see some exceptionally good work, with the sexual rights activists and women's rights activists. Some of the groups like Freedom House and others that are in the human rights council are taking issues forward. I don't think we have quite got critical mass in terms of the understanding of how human rights relates to Internet Governance.
But we are seeing some wonderful innovation. I think in addition to those that have been mentioned, the new principles on surveillance, that have recently been released, the 13 principles, if you go to necessaryandproportionate.org. Basically outstanding not necessarily a new standard for how human rights apply online but rather a guideline, an interpreter of aid of how existing standards relate to the surveillance and the rule of law. I think that's extremely important and very, very useful.
And I think that there is really a desire for more interaction with Internet Governance spaces and forum to think more deeply about how to take forward human rights issues that are happening, mindful of the Internet Governance and how it works and not to step across it.
Having said that, human rights mechanisms are not multistakeholder, they are multilateral and they are between governments. Civil society where they are extremely creative about how they get into that space, it's a limited space. Business is still very much at the periphery of those discussions. It's really only been in the last five years that business and human rights have been talked about together at the global level in terms of mechanisms and I think more work is needed there.
And I think that there's offerings that Internet Governance discussions have for those discourse on rights, including for example, the Internet rights and principles charters, the freedom online coalitions and they are not being offered enough and I think they would enrich and deepen those discussions. I think it would be interesting to talk more, particularly the main issue about human rights.
If we had something to say about human rights, and those other forums, what would we say? How could we use that to support the strategies of human rights defenders. So I think I will just close there and open it back to Chat.
>> CHAT GARCIA: Thank you, Joy.
We want to open it. Maybe she deserves a clap as well so, it's all equal, right?
(Applause).
Thank you.
Okay. So we want to open the floor to questions, and we would like to build on what ‑‑ to identify where the spaces are. How are we making those connections? How are we going to expand more the discourse around Internet rights so that it goes into the main stream realm of discussion and also implementation of human rights standards.
So, yes, please and tell us your name, where you are from. Thank you.
>> PARTICIPANT: Hello. Good morning my name is Rinawati, and I came from ‑‑ and I come from Indonesia. I came here with other colleagues from several areas in Indonesia, and because I seen this free forum to talk about it, not only questioning some things, and we will be raising our issue here also. I agree with Kamilia, it's definitely ignoring and neglecting the multi‑identities of women, which is for us, for example, it's like, backstabbing our ‑‑ what is it? ‑‑ the progress of women's empowerment itself.
And we ‑‑ okay, when we know about the Miss Internet Bali, we are forced to be the Barbie model or something like that. It's ignoring our rights. I agree that the Internet is seen as our safe space, because women in Indonesia came from a different kind of background, different kind of social or sexual orientation. We do also come from women that got HIV and AIDS issue and also the different kind of religion and tolerance.
So we think that Internet is very important for us here in Indonesia. Maybe my other colleague will talk, about their own context.
And the third one is, like, we already found also in several case that text or language is using head speech or violence languages, which is probably not aware by commons people but it's really targeting women as effectives, and also other special ‑‑ for example, sexual ‑‑ other sexual orientation backgrounds. So I think this is very important.
And I do agree that state here, our Indonesian state government should be responsible of it, because we are not ‑‑ because we are the citizen of Indonesia and I think it's very important to work together and to make sure that international state, our government is responsible with us.
Thank you.
>> CHAT GARCIA: Thank you.
>> PARTICIPANT: Can we share other issues here?
>> CHAT GARCIA: Yes.
>> PARTICIPANT: I will translate it.
>> CHAT GARCIA: Oh, okay.
(Speaking a language other than English).
>> PARTICIPANT: Because our colleagues here came from the LGBT groups, then they are usually often used Facebook as their safe space to communicate and to spread our campaigns or their issues. And then they see that they feel that they have a lot of violence through Facebook.
(Speaking a language other than English).
>> PARTICIPANT: One of her colleagues say that they ‑‑ she sprayed ‑‑ or what is it submit an article on the website and then she got a bad response, and being victimized and also say that don't spread the ‑‑ what is it? ‑‑ the bad disease because maybe she's a lesbian and said don't spread this disease in the Internet.
(Speaking a language other than English).
>> PARTICIPANT: Because they are opening their identities they say on the wall of the Facebook, see usually their colleagues are usually got cyberbullying and also got head speech and then got a bad response from the other who rate that kind of information.
(Speaking language other than English).
>> PARTICIPANT: She say that it's very ‑‑ the psychology, when they are asking so much about their sexual orientation.
(speaking language other than English).
>> PARTICIPANT: So there's several more case like this and if you need other data or information, she would like to talk with you and discuss with you and how to make other solution with this.
>> CHAT GARCIA: Thank you very much. I think you raised two points here, and also that that Kamilia has raised around the Internet. I think one of the things we could do is to see if you, the Indonesian groups would like to say something in the main session around that, just in relation to, you know, overall and not necessarily against ‑‑ because we do have ‑‑ you know, not ‑‑ not criticizing the woman herself, but really the notion around the Miss Internet.
And secondly, I think you raise a really important point which Johan raised as well, around hate speech. You were saying earlier that was something that came up in Sweden. It's come up here and what we also know, it's come up in different places as well. So it's getting ‑‑ it's becoming much more of a ‑‑ of an issue. So maybe if there's anyone who can ‑‑ would wants to say something around that and how ‑‑ how the human rights standards and mechanisms can respond to that or is that ‑‑ (No audio).
>> JOY LIDDICOAT: Thanks, Chat. I think this is a really important issue. I think that there's been several responses to this. I think one is just the complete frustration with private companies, inconsistency in applying their own terms and conditions about content, the content that is taken down, the content that is not taken down, responsiveness in relation to complaints both the lack of speed and doing so. So I think there's a whole bunch of issues there. I'm sorry we don't have someone from the private sector on our panel. We did have somebody, but unfortunately, she had a death in the family and she wasn't actually able to join us at the last meeting.
(No audio).
>> JELEN PACLARIN: And I think one concern that may be our Indonesian friends would be able to do is I think when we did our universal periodic review, of course, we still need the strength in the UPR, it was at the same time that Indonesia was also having their review and I think something like this should be erased both in the UPR and even in the CEDAW. Of course, at the context of ASEAN, we had the declaration of the violence against women. It was clearly articulated that when we speak of women, had encompasses all women based on sex and gender. It does not particularly articulate LGBT, that's one of the main issues of LGBT groups in Southeast Asia. It was confined to the word "others" referring to LGBT as others, but I think the declaration can be used particularly in the ASEAN context of how we could further raise this issue, you know, how hate ‑‑
(No audio).
Against women so that we ‑‑ so that we as women will not be able to access this opportunity to ‑‑ to say our opinion, to participate, and to engage with governments. So I think we have to work together and I'm particularly addressing the southeast Asian context and make the ASEAN governments respond to these kinds of concerns and issues.
>> CHAT GARCIA: Is there other?
Yes, question?
The mic has to travel quite far. Here.
>> PARTICIPANT: Yes, I just wanted to actually comment on two of the sort of things ‑‑
>> CHAT GARCIA: Can you introduce.
>> PARTICIPANT: Oh, I'm Bushaka. I wanted to talk about the whole hate speech thing and how while it's something that's very useful, it's also being used in a number of ways that I think is actually weakening the discussion hate speech. So I will give you an example from India. Last year there was the India Internet Governance conference, which was a multistakeholder conference. On the panel at hate speech, a political spokesperson from a political party called every instance of criticizing a politician from his party as an instance of hate speech. Right?
So it's a very loose use of the term in public discourse, but what I want to say is that it's not like the policy and the public discourses are completely divorced from each other. Right? And even in policy we understand it as something specific and defined, what is actually happening is in public discourse, the term is being used increasingly for practically anything.
So we need to ‑‑ somewhere in the policy, discourse and in the rights sort of discuss, define what it is not, right? Just criticizing a politician to call that hate speech is just meaningless in my opinion. So that's one.
And the second thing is, you know, because that's how then start to understand hate speech. And then it becomes very much restrictive of freedom of expression.
The second thing I wanted to say is as users of the Internet who are sort of looking to sort of, you know, have our rights, sort of respected, protected upheld, whatever when we use the Internet, I feel like we are stuck between two things. One is policy, which is made at the government level, and terms of use of companies, which actually ‑‑ of major websites which actually represent their policies. And which affect us daily as users. And the thing is we have no clue about whether these terms of use actually adhere to any rights standards at all, right? They vary from company to company and, of course, I'm not talking about every single website in the world.
But if we were to just look at the first 10, it would be interesting to see whether these actually uphold human ‑‑ like, how these sort of relate to human rights standards and it would be interesting, I think, it will be increasingly important for policymakers to seriously consider how corporations which are giant policymakers, but unrecognized on the Internet can adhere to human right standards.
>> CHAT GARCIA: Okay.
Here in front, please. Yes, thank you.
>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you. My name is Xianhong Hu from UNESCO. I have heard several opinions from local Indonesian. Particularly on women issues agenda, I like to share a little bit what my organisation, UNESCO is doing, because it's a complex issue, as we all mentioned at the policy level, at the capacity building level and normative level.
And we are ‑‑ our responsibilities is really to keep our governments our Member States responsible to align them with the international standards and those human rights, including women's rights, gender equality in the ‑‑ in their policy making, related to Internet.
But in the reality, it's really very difficult to reach a sort of understanding and consensus, many of them because our Internet, everything is related to each other. You cannot just say, for example, human rights. Our major amendment is on the freedom expression, but as we have seen in reality, it's related to so many other challenges and rights, human rights, freedom of expression and the privacy, for example.
When we try to discuss among our Member States, we found that on one side, it was at the free special Internet should be equally protected as we did in the reality, but on the other side is mainly the government said nowadays that it seems the states and also individuals, they have lost their control of their personal data and the information.
And then what we realize, these two rights, they are related, and they ‑‑ that relation is tricky. Sometimes our Internet, they support each other for the right to be anonymous, a support, you can speak more freely when you are not identified. But sometimes you are also competing and conflicting, particularly for women in many cases, their identity, including their personal gender and orientation information can be exposed, disclosed on the Internet which could be threatening in a sense.
So it's ‑‑ so we ‑‑ we did a global survey on the policy and the regulator of firm work at the global level. Yes, the existing global international standard is there. It's ready. But if you look into the different context and different countries, many of them, they don't ‑‑ they may have a constitutional standard, yes, of expression and women's rights but at the level of criminal law and the civil law, there are many vacuum in personal ‑‑ in the privacy and also of hate speech. There's an absence.
And at a level of company, corporations, self‑regulatory framework. Even the countries and many companies they don't really have a very effective protections on that, the privacy protection.
Facebook is really an example. You know, you give up all of your privacy to them. And at the level of individuals, we see even for those educated population, they don't really ‑‑ they don't ‑‑ they are not very much aware of the risks and the skills, the lack of the competence to use, to Internet on the Internet with sufficient skills and ethical standard and the competence.
So these are all what we are trying to do. So we have done ‑‑ at the policy level, we do the research. We study the different regulation and the policies to ‑‑ to inform, to sensitize our Member States to the governments as you all feel that the governments have the responsibility, but the governments also need to learn to know what is actually happening.
And there's also a few challenges at many issues.
When we talk to the privacy to them, they say look, the national security was threatened.
>> CHAT GARCIA: Please wrap it up. I want to give a little bit of time for other.
>> PARTICIPANT: So the strategy, first of all, I think it was to have a holistic, very comprehensive framework to look at the issue, the particular issues. You cannot just tell folks one thing without thinking of others. We have to harmonize all the human rights.
Second thing, I think as at the capacity, level, we really need a package of the toolkits we can provide to our different stakeholders. We have done a media information literacy toolkits which cater for ‑‑ and we have the gender indicator to measure the development of media and ICTs at all levels, not just to fight against the gender stereotype at all levels.
If it was the media, I can will see not only content, but also the production process. As women, equally participating in the management and development of this media content and the applications. So it's really a full package of work which we should pick up holistically.
>> CHAT GARCIA: Thank you. Change you. I think Johan, you wanted to respond to the question on hate speech?
>> JOHAN HALLENBORG: Thank you. I wanted to comment on the comment from my friend from India. I very much agree with what you say. I think there is a risk when we use the word "hate speech" that it all of a sudden includes everything that we don't like. And this is clearly something we need to work with.
And I think we have quite a lot of ‑‑ quite a lot of information and leadership to find in international law, and I think that's where we should start. We need to ‑‑ we need to accept that freedom of expression also includes expression that shall shock, disturb and defend. However, what is illegal and what clearly is within the realm of hate speech is not allowed offline and certainly not online. But we need to be able to address it in an effective way. Is law lacking? Well, then establish law. Is law there? Make it work. This is quite simple.
And I also get a little bit perturbed, in the same manner, when you leave rights languages and you start to talk about ethics. To me, this is clearly a slippery slope because ethics is a concept which is very undefined in law. It does not give you a direction of justice. You can't make it work in court, and this is a concept that is used for political purposes. It doesn't say anything about your claims or rights. So it makes me worried when I see the use of the concept ethics instead of rights.
Clearly, some platforms, private platforms, they limit human rights. And once you enter them, you also basically give up some of your human rights.
If Facebook has a policy not to show certain pictures that really are part of your freedom of expression. According to international law. Then you effectively give that right away, right? So that is basically what you are doing. Is that a violation of human rights laws? No, not really. Do you this clearly, consciously, you know what you are doing.
However, of course, states have responsibility if there are violations on human rights taking place on Facebook against you, to ‑‑ so it's a complicated question but I just wanted to highlight that, when you enter into these contractual relationships with Facebook and others, there is also this element of giving away some of your rights, actually.
>> CHAT GARCIA: Anyone want to enter that debate? I think there is the state responsibility and in some cases, the state will exercise their mandate, but in others, in other cases of human rights violation, they won't. I think we see that. It depends on what it is. So there are two hands here. Yes, please, introduce yourself.
Yeah, yeah, and then you, and then Valentin.
>> PARTICIPANT: My name is Gigi and I work in Washington, D.C.. I really appreciated all the comments that have gone before me and all the comments from the panel. The title of this workshop, I thought was really fantastic about connecting our rights and I can see now it's not just about how, you know, the rights we enjoy online that enable the rights but where that connective tissue sometimes leads to a little bit of conflict that we have to figure out what balance to use to resolve them.
And so this point about really staying within the rights language, it's very empowering to do that, and I think it's really important to highlight examples of when exercising those rights. So, for example when someone exercising their right to free expression might lead to speech that offends how that can be remedied with more speech, and there are three examples over the last year in the United States that I thought were very interesting, not only because it shows how the Internet is enabling more right to freedom of religion and more right to freedom of sexual choice, and also enabling the ‑‑ the kind of elimination of racism to really come to the fore.
So just very quickly to go through those. Cheerios made a commercial that showed a biracial couple, and this commercial was posted on YouTube and the comments that ensued were very offensive, incredibly offensive. But then what happened was very interesting. So to respond to that, the blogosphere erupted with a discussion of how racism still exists in America and this was a society that was trying to talk about a post‑racist society. And having this example come to the fore really enabled the communities to discuss.
And then soon after, a parody commercial was actually posted and it basically copied the entire script of the commercial, except at the end, instead of a, you know, black father and a white mother, it was actually two mothers, a black mother and a white mother and it was really just showing that we need to get over all of our different barriers and all of our different prejudices.
Another one was when the Miss America winner was announced. She was an Indian‑American and on Twitter, there was so much criticism, and actually, a lot of it was just incorrect racism too. They couldn't identify her religion. They couldn't identify her nationality. But, again, it really showed that this hate exists offline.
And then, you know, being able to talk about it online was actually quite helpful and empowering and, again, hitting back at hate speech with more speech.
And then the third is a very interesting service and I'm sure you are all familiar, which is read‑it which throughout the years has been identified as sort of a cesspool for very offensive ideas and language, but really, a clear demonstration of what, you know, the full exercise of free speech can lead to.
Well, it was back to school time, and a college student posted a photo of a fellow student who was a Sikh woman and made some very unflattering comments about her. And then what happened afterwards was very amazing. She goes on Read It and responds in a very kind way, very beautiful language. And then the original poster actually responded in kind, apologized and said, you know, really that was a teachable moment for him.
And actually, a couple other scenarios over the, you know, next few months happened and then the cofounder of Read It also spoke up to take a stance. So the one thing I really wanted to tie those three threads together was if anything, we need to recognize that because the Internet allows all of this free speech and allows us to see the internal conversations that are happening within groups, it's really showing us what has been there, and so it's not that we need to blame the ‑‑ the device that's bringing, you know this to light. It's almost that we need to use it for the power that it is showing us of the hate and ideas that are out there. And then also using it combat.
And then we can find these examples of where groups have used rights kind of frameworks to respond in kind and to really change the debate and that's going to be the transformation, the education, and the enabling the rights that, you know, the power of the Internet holds.
>> CHAT GARCIA: So you are not just bringing in the mechanisms but the recognition of people to use their rights in the space.
Valentina. I think you had your hand up.
>> PARTICIPANT: Hello, Valentina. Internet activist.
I would like, first of all, to thank all the panelists, they have been really, really inspirational. I think we are in a new world narrative, when we talk about the Internet. What is happening is happening outside. If you are an HIV person, if you are in the LGBT, a minority group of any kind, you would be bullied, at least.
But what I would like to say, when we would talk, it's very good, but very important that we frame into the rights, but still in we look at limits rights at the universal declaration of human rights, Article 29, we say about the limits, there is omitting of the just requirements of morality, public and general welfare. So we would like to frame in term of human rights and especially on the national level, we want to focus on rights but we are constantly pushed into this just morality.
Morality is an even far more challenging than ethics and so this morality is entering the legislation because whenever it's about public order, whenever it's about pornography and all of this stuff, the morality is there to hand down each and every one that's different and then morality becomes physically aggressive. I think all the people that are talking here, they are talking about something that start online and discuss online, and finishes offline with attacks.
This regarding Facebook, is it a contractual relation, but it's not an equal contractual relation. I can say yes or no. If I say no, I'm outside. All the small letters are done in a way I cannot go through them. It's a commodification of rights. All of civil society is on Facebook. If I want to be there, to love it, to talk, to advocate, I have to accept it.
And my state or some other state will have agreement with this big contractors and co‑modify my rights. They will really narrow it to that specific page that has to go down.
We had a press conference, and we were threatening because it was about LGBT, and LGBT rights. It was a fascist. We know who it was. The police will not look. They will not look into the Facebook. They will not look at the audio recording. They will not do a simple research, but if we protest, they will know our address. They will reveal our handle.
So there are too many layers and I think the rights are the only frame we have as activists but they use a close door agreement, how we make this working, thank you.
>> CHAT GARCIA: We have one more hand here and then we can ‑‑ oh, we have more hands now. Okay. I think there's one more mic around so we can move faster. Thank you.
>> PARTICIPANT: Hi, I'm Mike Godwin with Inner News. One of the things that ‑‑ by the way, this has been a very, very interesting and informative discussion, not just from the panelists but also from the other contributors here, who are attendees.
One of the things that I have noticed in my work on Internet‑related human rights, which I have been doing now for around 25 years has been that governments tend to react to social adoption of the Internet by passing prohibitions. They ‑‑ the instinct is to say, here's this ‑‑ here's the Internet. The Internet poses certain risks and problems, and the beginning impulse of government ‑‑ really of any government, whether it's, you know, an ostensibly democratic government or governments of more closed governments, the first is to pass inhibitions. One of the things I would like to see emerge is the government to speak first to the Internet in terms of positive rights guarantees, expressly recognizing Internet‑related human rights as the baseline for understanding what all following regulation and criminal laws and other legal prohibitions have to be measured against.
So human rights has to be ‑‑ there has to be a beginning, of the human rights framework. I notice that entertainingly, one of my colleagues here is also from the Philippines. I know that in the Philippines, you know, you've had the cybercrime act of 2012, which laid out ‑‑ which was laid out a lot of prohibitions and then a lot of the reaction has been to come back and say, no, we really ought to have rights on the Internet and maybe that's the thing we should focus on in the Philippines. And the same thing, by the way, has happened in Brazil and it's happening elsewhere around the world.
And it's the nature of rights guarantees that ‑‑ of human rights instruments that when you start guaranteeing human rights, there are always people who will use those rights abusively and I think that touches on the hate speech issue.
But having said all of that, I wonder if we can begin to form a consensus as activists, as participants in civil society, as representatives of governments or representatives of companies that we have to begin with a baseline of rights, guarantees and measure everything we do against that, those standards.
>> CHAT GARCIA: Very good point. We have two more hands. We can do that and then we will have some responses from the floor and also from the panel. Yes, at the back there. And then on the end.
>> PARTICIPANT: Thank you, my name is Nissa for women's human rights Indonesia. I want to add something in the Indonesian context. Yes, I agree that government shall be responsible to guarantee our rights on the Internet. But what happened in Indonesia in terms of protection, we have the law in 2008, about Internet and electronic transition. But the law finally used to criminalized and bloggers, women human rights defenders, who speak out on the Internet who criticize government and others.
On the other hand, like Kamilia mentioned we don't have any infrastructure to really be able to enforce the cybercrime or online trafficking or others. So with have to see, like, two dimension of rights on the Internet. So maybe you can ‑‑ I can get this suggestion from the panel or also from the other participants, what kind of law or if you have any experience how the law has a clear definition or clear regulations or it can be able to protect us but it won't violate our rights also.
Thank you.
>> CHAT GARCIA: Yes, thank you. Over there on the end.
>> PARTICIPANT: Hi, this is formally Malaysian, center for constitutionalism and human rights. I'm sorry, I have to read out. We also work with Freedom House. Just to share the Malaysian experience, because we get a similar experience as to what the friends from Indonesian mentioned about hate speech when it comes to LGBT and women's rights and all of that. We get those kind of experiences as well in Malaysia.
And to us and the law won't really protect. As another person mentioned, the authorities will not do anything when it comes to LGBT rights and protection and all of that. It's only when it involves things which the ruling coalition might have interest in them, the authorities will step in.
So we found out that the best way to actually counter this kind of hate speech is actually as Kamilia has mentioned to talk to them to start to discuss.
The good thing in Malaysia is that although there's hate speech and a lot of this kind of expression, there's also a lot of sane voices to counter the hate and I think strategically groups need to work together. So not just the traditional alliances, for example, you know, LGBT rights and women's rights, working together, but beyond the traditional alliances.
So for example, perhaps you can work with religion based NGOs and law organisations, et cetera. So that whenever there's a hate speech outside that is posted on the Internet, the others, the other organisations can actually step in.
So, for example, if you talk about ‑‑ if in the situation that was given where they say that it's a disease, do not spread this kind of disease on the Internet, maybe if you have an alliance with doctors that can actually say, look, this is not a disease. Or religious organisations can counter from a religious point of view, saying this is against religion.
I know the public opinion is that it is, but there are points of review from the religious perspective that it is not. And lawyers may say it's a rights issue. You may disagree but you must respect the right.
We have found that this is quite effective in Malaysia, so at the end, whenever there is counterarguments, we noticed that a lot of the hate will either ‑‑ they will either try to find some sort of common ground with you or they will just go away. So that's one strategy which, perhaps can be employed and taken from the Malaysian situation.
>> CHAT GARCIA: Yes, there's more hands. Yes, one more and then we can then get the panel to respond. I think we are running ‑‑ oh, actually we have run out of time. Can you make it short, right?
>> PARTICIPANT: Yes.
>> CHAT GARCIA: There's no other session after this? (Off microphone comment).
>> PARTICIPANT: It will be a short conversation because my English is not so well. So let me introduce myself, I'm Patu I'm with an organisation for Women Who Live with HIV and AIDS. I want to talk about the discrimination that we get. We are in Bali. When we got this disease, we got HIV, we are rejected. We are rejected by our own family. We are rejected by our ex‑husband's family and we are rejected by our surrounding. And the big problem is because of the less information. That's why I'm here. I want to talk about how Internet will help us to get normalism, how that we want to live. We want to continue our life without discrimination.
Thank you.
>> CHAT GARCIA: Thank you very much.
(Applause).
>> CHAT GARCIA: Okay, shall we get response, Jelen and then, Kamilia?
>> JELEN PACLARIN: Yeah, my response is on what Valentina mentioned about the expansion of morality and what our colleague mentioned about the capacity of rights.
So let me take the cybercrime law of the Philippines as an example. One major contention that we were raising at the time was the inclusion of cyber sex as a content‑related offense. Even without legal definition when we refer to the word "cyber sex" as something ‑‑ I mean, as a common, it's sex. It means consensual. It means something that you like maybe or you enjoy. It's not very clear in terms of how it was phrased, cyber sex, no?
What is the crime on the cyber sex? Why it's being considered as a crime? And I think this is what Valentina is trying to point out, that there is an expansion of morality here. So, for example, in the Philippines you all know that we have a lot of migrant workers.
And one major link, I mean, connection that we had with our ‑‑ maybe with some migrant workers' partners is through ICT and some were speaking of cyber sex. Are we saying those migrant workers who are engaging in cyber sex with their spouses abroad. What we are saying is that what we are trying to criminalize here are sexual violence committed in the cyberspace.
We have to be very clear in terms of how do we use language because language really are very powerful. So I think the role of social movements like us, CSOs, women's rights, Internet rights groups is to raise awareness and to use language as a powerful tool. Language is both powerful, not only in society and influencing the language of others CSOs, influencing them, but also in creating normatives standards, in creating standards or standard setting.
So when we had that position along with other groups like FMA and other groups working on Internet rights, we had more allies taking on our issues. Why we are against the passage of the cybercrime law? Why we are not in favor of including cyber sex in the cybercrime law? Why we think that the cyber sex provision is a way of expanding morality and not an exercise of the positive rights of women? Because most likely, most women will be apprehended, most women will be put in jail, but not those who are subscribing to this. Of course, I'm talking of the crime. I'm not talking of the consensual sex.
And it actually deprives the right of women and men or women to women, men to men to engage in cyber sex, especially if they think it's something that they find, what, sexually desirable or whatever. Or sexy.
Another concern that I would like to point out ‑‑ yeah. Just last is on the balancing of rights and responsibilities. It's being used basically are negatively in the ASEAN context and I think that's something that those two are trying to influence the language of balancing rights and duties to make progressive interpretation of what it really means because it's always being used as the ASEAN as having a different context, and I'm ‑‑ I'm very ‑‑ we're very vigilant in terms of how this particular usage of balancing rights and duties can also be used to suppress freedom of expression and the ICT.
>> CHAT GARCIA: I had some specific questions. I would like member of the panel to respond to her question. She made a direct question, where she will find that information. So who else? Joy, do you want to ‑‑
>> JOY LIDDICOAT: Thanks. And it's great to be in a workshop where the panelists are completely overpowered by the brilliance of our participants. Thank you very much. I really enjoyed the examples, actually. I wanted to pick up on a couple of points. One is, I think, definitely we see governments responding out of fear, in some cases in relation to regulating content but not also ‑‑ only out of the fear but also out of opportunity. You know, here's a chance to regulate and why it wasn't possible, before and to ‑‑ and to extend reach into control of content and expression that weren't possible before.
So I think that pushback is critical. I want to also respond to those who have said, you know, the limits ‑‑ there are limits to the remedies that we can take with law. I think that's absolutely right. Just as, you know, while we have the same human rights online as offline, access to justice offline is still mediated by so many things.
You know, our agenda, our income, our position in society, knowledge, and so on. So I think that linking of strategies online and offline strategies is actually really critical.
I think ‑‑ and I think with our capacity building, I think Johan has mentioned earlier, particularly for institutions and others so that when they get these cases we get good cases and they do respond whether it's police, you know, or otherwise.
In relation to the question about more and examples of more speech, I think it's absolutely true to say that the ill‑informed and negative speech can be responded to. It's not always enough. While there are good stories often that ‑‑ that the ability to respond with more speech is mediated by gender, by class, by positions in society and sometimes it's not just about speech.
If you look at the bank note case in England of getting a woman on one of the English Bank Notes and the campaign against the woman who created and the hate speech and the violence and the threats, I think it wasn't just really about responding with more speech.
So I think we need lots of strategies is where I'm going with this and there isn't ‑‑ and in sharing strategies, I think ‑‑ having multiple complex ones is useful, and it's really nice, I think to think that this conversation, I think would be very helpful for the Internet rights activists who are limited in their discourse around freedom of expression. That's something that we should think about sharing back to other organisations.
>> CHAT GARCIA: And just to add to that, there was an example in Pakistan where the hate speech, the intensity of it forced the women's human right activist to have to ‑‑ how do you say, you know, not to be in the space and, in fact, really a personal safety issue that was a threat to their lives.
So it has those kind of implications. It's not ‑‑ you know, there are differences depending on the context.
Kamilia, what did you want to say? Did you want to speak?
The mic is over there.
>> KAMILIA: I will speak more about the case, the Scandinavian case of LGBT ‑‑ (No audio).
>> It's not really an urgent issue right now. There's also a story about that. There's now people, rather than choose to have a toilet in their house. So how do we respond, like, that is a challenge but it is also research saying communication right now is more important than toilets.
So I just want to close with that, that we should do more follow‑up after discussion with local, national and international levels, I guess that's it. Thank you.
>> JOHAN HALLENBORG: Thank you very much. I thought that was a very interesting example. It tells you about the importance that people give to the ability to communicate, and to speak and to share and to learn and to trade, and whatnot.
Anyway, I wanted to say that I think this conversation was very useful and I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to join. I think as Joy said, it's important to continue to minimize the gap between digital rights actives and human rights activists, it's really important and I think this discussion here is helpful in that respect.
We were talking about creating baselines. My friend in Internews asked about baselines and I think we have some baselines that we could use. The resolution 28 from the human rights council is definitely a baseline for governments.
And I think for companies we are increasingly seeing frameworks that can be used. I think of the global network initiatives, for example, which sets human rights‑based guidelines for companies. And recently we have seen the industry dialogue creating a similar framework aimed at telcos specifically. I'm not saying these frameworks are perfect, but I'm saying it's a good step. The G & I also includes responsibilities for companies to open up their books to audits, which is very useful and quite powerful.
And I understand that also Facebook has now joined the G & I, which should also open their work more to transparency and insight which is important, very important.
I think also we are seeing on the remedy side, we are seeing some work being done now in the Council of Europe, looking at what does this mean in human rights context? And we hope that the council will adopt a next that also will state that people can reasonably expect that companies should also give people a right of remedy.
So if your rights have been violated by a company, you can also expect that the company would have a responsibility to give you some kind of remedy or a possibility to ‑‑ to complain, a complaints mechanism. Wile not yet part of a human right per se, we are seeing that these discussions are taking place in increasingly ‑‑ increasingly many fora at the moment, which I think is useful.
Thank you.
>> CHAT GARCIA: Thank you, Johan. I think we need to close the session. Thank you very much for all the contributions and also for the panel. I think we ‑‑ the last few comments really sort of, you know, identified some of the strategies that we ‑‑ that we can move forward with, which is really what we wanted to come out from this workshop and this we want to bring to the main session around human rights so that then it ‑‑ in this ‑‑ in the IGF so that it can be part of the outcome document coming out of this forum.
I think the one other thing that I would suggest as well is expanding the public discourse of rights as one of our strategies which is really important so that you are sort of empowering not only users but also you are looking at the different activist organisations civil society to be able to understand the connections because that would draw ‑‑ it would seem to me, it would draw strength from that movement overall and I think even in terms of the experience, I have been working around women's rights for a long time, we have seen in the last ten years how that has come into the main stream and how these movements are now taking it as part of their own issues. So just to add that to the mix.
And thank you very much to our panelists and to all of you.
Tarima Kasih. That's the third Indonesian phrase.
(End of session 10:46 a.m.)
FINISHED TRANSCRIPT
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EIGHTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
BALI
BUILDING BRIDGES ‑ ENHANCING MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER COOPERATION FOR GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
OCTOBER 22, 2013
9:00 A.M
SESSION WS 134
CONNECTING OUR RIGHTS: STRATEGIES FOR PROGRESS
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