The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded the world of the importance of the internet, as a window to education, access to information, health, culture and countless other aspects of daily life.
The UN Secretary General’s Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, launched in June 2020, underlines the crucial role that digital technology plays in the COVID-19 and post COVID-19 world, and our collective accountability to connect the unconnected, protect the vulnerable and marginalized, and respect human rights in the digital era.
The digital divide between those on and offline is threatening to become the new face of inequality, reinforcing social and economic disadvantages. Having a free flow of digital information for everyone, everywhere is a matter of life and death if people are unable to access essential health information – and reliable information more broadly.
Yet recent weeks have seen a heightening of trends in restricting space for a free and open internet.
As restrictions online emerge across the world, internet universality is in jeopardy. In the face of the pandemic, and even though the international law allows for emergency powers in response to significant threats, UNESCO is convinced that human rights should not be compromised, and that an unfragmented internet is in the global interest.
We have witnessed, for instance, the blocking of mobile apps, while new national security laws have raised fears of the fragmentation of the Internet, and restrictions to human rights, notably freedom of expression, freedom of association, access to information, data protection and non-discrimination, and privacy online.
Internet shutdowns in some regions continue to deny access to millions, when access to information is not only necessary, but life-saving.
Laws and policies to combat disinformation or ‘fake news’ have often been overly broad, going beyond the narrow conditions for which freedom of expression can be limited as defined by international law.
These conditions underscore the relevance of the unanimous endorsement of 195 UNESCO Member States in 2015, of the concept of Internet Universality.
The internet universality framework stands for four ROAM principles – meaning that UNESCO stands for an Internet that is human-Rights based, Open, Accessible to all, and governed through Multi-stakeholder participation.. In line with UNESCO’s constitutional mandate to promote freedom of expression and access to information, the concept of internet universality guides UNESCO’s work on digital governance.
UNESCO thus stands strongly for defending the ROAM principles – based on international standards – as a holistic framework and recommendations while protecting all rights in an indivisible manner, and also considering their impact on preserving Internet’s openness and accessibility in a spirit of multi-stakeholder participation in the norms, regulations and programmes that govern digital technologies.