Nighat Dad, Executive Director, Digital Rights Foundation, Islamabad, Pakistan. Pic: Salim Matramkot/The Peninsula
Doha: Nighat Dad, Executive Director of Digital Rights Foundation, has said that social media conference in Doha discussed different challenges around social media, Internet and digital spaces with openness.
“The conference was good in a way that it happened in Qatar. There was openness in discussing different challenges around social media, Internet and digital spaces. There were experts from all over the world and also from the region from governments to corporations as well as social media experts, human rights activists and journalists,” she said while talking to The Peninsula on the conclusion of International Conference on ‘Social Media: Challenges and Ways to Promote Freedoms and Protect Activists’ which was held on February 16-17 in Doha.
Dad is Executive Director of Digital Rights Foundation, working in Pakistan, on cyber harassment, data protection, and free speech online. She has bagged an array of prestigious awards along the way, including the Human Rights Tulip Award in 2016. She was nominated as Young Global Leader by World Economic Forum in 2018 and recently was among the 21 Young Leaders from Asia by Asia Society.
On digital rights and free speech online, she said that most countries in the Global South were still grappling with the idea of human rights, and ensuring those vital rights. “These countries are often the ones where we see the most violations of digital rights, as these rights are still seen as wholly separate from human rights.”
She thinks that having umbrella policies at international level while keeping in mind only Global North will prove problematic and will bring the issue back full circle.
She said that growing nationalism and populism was a global trend developing in offline environment and was also being translated into online environment. “Social media activists and journalists who exercise free speech and share information or opinions are facing massive resistance online from such forces.”
She said that blocking Internet was blocking many fundamental human rights like right to access to information, right to freedom of expression. “The governments blocking Internet should be held accountable internationally and local activists should also generate evidence to take the authorities to the courts of law to win their rights.”
Talking on the laws to regulate social media content, she said that the Global South also suffered from the habit of copying laws made in the West. “Often times we see progressive laws being passed in Western countries, and soon after, developing countries begin to follow their footsteps, in the name of development and progress. This incessant need to play ‘catch up’ often misses the mark and leads to more issues than solutions.”
Some governments, she says, in our part of the world are working or have already enacted problematic regulations around online harm or dealing with hate speech or fake news.
“These rules were inspired by an approach taken by Western countries towards social media companies to control content and hate speech. However, the digital landscape in countries like Pakistan and many others is too young to deal with such legislation. Moreover, such laws would impede freedom of speech, and dampen the growth of developing digital economy, rather than strengthen it.”
Dad added: “EU and UN also need to think how they can intervene when governments around the world violate international agreements and treaties that they have signed and ratified like International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”
She emphasised on enhanced coordination between civil society organisations (CSOs) to protect digital rights. “We need to think about civil society organisations, at a country level, regional level and the international level. If we are to look at the global CSO ecosystem, there is very little engagement across organisations addressing the issues around digital rights and its violations.”
She said that in an attempt to protect online civil liberties and the creation of equal and open online spaces, it is also crucial that CSOs engage with one another. “Now is the time that CSOs from across the region sit together, identify similar issues in similar cultural contexts, and figure out solutions that are specific to their regions.”
She further said that women led digital right organisations need to be supported and funded to help realise the dream of a safer, more inclusive online world.
