Conflict of rights and interests

7amleh, the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, published a study on Palestinian digital rights and the global impact of EU legislation - the Digital Services Act (DSA) in particular. The study tackles the following questions: How does the DSA’s approach to hate speech and other harmful content affect the digital rights of Palestinians and advocates for Palestinian rights? What are the potential consequences of the DSA’s politicization by the EU in the Israel/Palestine context? What are the advantages and risks of the DSA for Palestinian digital rights? The study explains the DSA, interrogates its relevance for Palestinian digital rights, includes a case study of events that “​​worryingly point to the DSA having been applied with bias” in the timeframe starting from October 7, and concludes with recommendations addressing the EU institutions, civil society, and online platforms.

The Recommendation places itself among the current rules and procedures for addressing hate speech as well as in the larger context of European and international human rights law. It draws on the substantial body of case law from the European Court of Human Rights. The recommendation offers states and a variety of various players, including politicians and political parties, internet platforms, media, and civil society organizations, useful advice as well as a complete legal and policy framework to address hate speech, both offline and online.

This 2021 Policy Paper published by ARTICLE 19 provides a detailed overview of the potential harms of Biometric technologies, including violations of the fundamental rights of privacy and freedom of expression as well as “data protection, human dignity, non-discrimination, self-determination and the right to access an effective remedy.” Further, abuse of these technologies by law enforcement and other state bodies can result in discrimination from profiling of marginalized and at-risk communities. The Policy Brief provides case studies on the use of facial recognition and emotion recognition technologies, and offers a broad range of recommendations. Based on the gathered evidence, ARTICLE 19 calls for “a moratorium on the development and deployment of all biometric technologies until vital human rights safeguards are in place.” 

Commissioned by the UN Department of Peace Operations and the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, this recently published report delivers a conceptual analysis of the three major challenges of our time – hate speech, misinformation, and disinformation – and their similarities and differences. Written by Claire Wardle, PhD, Brown University, the report focuses on the contexts of conflict and high risk. Wardle provides an overview of relevant human rights law and international humanitarian law, stressing the “need for responses that respect freedom of expression while addressing harmful speech.”

The Future of Free Speech and The Dangerous Speech Project developed an interactive toolkit on the use of counterspeech. The toolkit starts by explaining counterspeech through its various definitions and introducing the phenomenon of “counternarrative” with examples of NGOs’ and activists’ campaigns. The toolkit asks, “To what content does counterspeech respond?” and follows with counterspeech goals, strategies, and practical considerations. The examples of counterspeech analyzed by the authors include #iamhere, an international collective counterspeech network; Mirrors of Racism, a Brazilian campaign; the work Hasnain Kazim, a German journalist; Reconquista Internet (RI), a counterspeech group created in response to hate group Reconquista Germanica (RG); and the story of Megan Phelps-Roper, the author of “Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving Extremism.”

“Artificial intelligence (AI) – a broad concept used in policy discussions to refer to many different types of technology – greatly influences and impacts the way people seek, receive, impart and access information and how they exercise their right to freedom of expression in the digital ecosystem. If implemented responsibly, AI can benefit societies, but there is a genuine risk that its deployment by States and private companies, such as internet intermediaries, could have a deteriorating effect on human rights… [This Paper] maps the key challenges to freedom of expression presented by AI across the OSCE region, in light of international and regional standards on human rights and AI. It identifies a number of overarching problems that AI poses to freedom of expression and human rights in general, in particular: (a.) The limited understanding of the implications for freedom of expression caused by AI, in particular machine learning; (b.) Lack of respect for freedom of expression in content moderation and curation; (c.) State and non-State actors circumventing due process and rule of law in AI-powered content moderation; (d.) Lack of transparency regarding the entire process of AI design, deployment and implementation; (e.) Lack of accountability and independent oversight over AI systems; and, (f.) Lack of effective remedies for violation of the right to freedom of expression in relation to AI. This Paper observes that these problems became more pronounced in the first months of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic incentivized States and the private sector to use AI even more, as part of measures introduced in response to the pandemic. A tendency to revert to technocratic solutions, including AI-powered tools, without adequate societal debate or democratic scrutiny was witnessed. Using four specific case studies (“security threats”; “hate speech”; media pluralism and diversity online; and the impact of AI-powered State surveillance on freedom of expression), this Paper shows how these problems manifest themselves. This Paper concludes that there is a need to further raise awareness, and improve understanding, of the impact of AI related to decision-making policies and practices on freedom of expression, next to having a more systematic overview of regional approaches and methodologies in the OSCE region. It provides a number of preliminary recommendations to OSCE participating States and internet intermediaries, to help ensure that freedom of expression and information are better protected when AI is deployed.”

In October 2000, following debates among different civil society organizations, and in support of the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights approved the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression. The Declaration constitutes a basic document for interpreting Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights. In light of the importance of these principles, the Commission also published an interpretation of the principles set forth in the Declaration.

The TrialWatch initiative of the Clooney Foundation for Justice published a report on Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and trials. Authored by Zimran Samuel, who is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London, the report zooms in on the blasphemy laws in practice (and malpractice) based on the monitoring of trials in Lahore, the capital of the Punjab province, over the course of 6 months in 2022. The monitoring concerned 24 cases, which amounted to more than 250 hearings: in 15 cases, the accused were detained; 217 examined hearings resulted in adjournments, most frequently because prosecution witnesses or complainants were absent; in five cases, the defendants showed mental health concerns; two cases resulted in convictions – one life sentence and one death penalty. “There are few barriers to prevent essentially anyone from registering a case,” Samuel writes, “and accused persons are often swiftly arrested [...] becom[ing] mired in proceedings that stretch on nearly indefinitely.”