News
Moderate Globally Impact Locally: Content Moderation Is Particularly Hard in African Countries
Until last year, a majority of Sudanese had lived their entire lives under the presidency of Omar al-Bashir. Africa has 16 of the 48 longest-serving leaders in the world, including the world’s longest-serving nonroyal leader, Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been in power since 1979. These regimes also share a common feature of gross violations of human rights, including those regarding digital rights and freedom of expression online. But things are changing. On April 11, 2019, the people finally succeeded in dislodging al-Bashir’s regime after protracted mass
RightsCon Debrief: Towards a rights-respecting global cybercrime treaty
This is the second of three articles drafted by the WIII Initiative’s summer researchers, reflecting on sessions they attended at this year’s virtual RightsCon. On December 27 2019, the United Nations General Assembly passed a Russian government sponsored Resolution for a new UN cybercrime treaty, with eighty eight countries voting in favour. Russia’s human rights record alone is cause to be suspicious of this initiative, but a careful look at the treaty’s language reveals that it poses a grave threat to human rights online. The problems include the use of vague language that can be
Stemming digital colonialism through reform of cybercrime laws in Africa
Cybercrime continues to be a global challenge, despite significant expansions in regulations targeting it. There is an important need for legal solutions, matching sanctions with effective implementation to help stem the rise of both cyber fraud and technical attacks on digital infrastructure.