Protecting human rights in the digital age

Interventions to foster and strengthen safeguards for human rights in the digital age take place in a rapidly evolving technology, political and socio-cultural landscape. Several overarching principles could inform and guide organisations' capacity-building efforts.

What is the issue?

Digital technologies and services create both opportunities and challenges for the fostering, safeguarding and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Digital technologies can be used for malicious purposes and be vulnerable to exploitation through a variety of malicious activities, including mis- and disinformation, mass surveillance and controls to restrict civic space and public discourse.

The UK National Cyber Security Strategy recognises the need to ‘rigorously protect and promote’ the UK’s core values in cyberspace, including democracy, the rule of law, privacy and human rights.

How did we help?

Through a literature review, key interviews, and a structured workshop, researchers identified and evaluated various approaches for building capacity (i.e. for empowering individuals, communities, or organisations with the skills, knowledge, tools, equipment, and other resources) needed to foster, safeguard, and exercise human rights and fundamental freedoms in the digital age.

The study, commissioned by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), provides an overview of human rights in the digital age, of the trends and challenges associated with them, and discusses capacity-building approaches that the FCDO could prioritise for funding on the basis of potential impacts, benefits, drawbacks, barriers, and enablers.

This research will help inform decision-making on future efforts to build capacity around human rights fostering and safeguarding.

What did we find?

Capacity-building interventions take place in a rapidly evolving technology, political and socio-cultural landscape characterised by:

• Opportunities to use data, digital technologies and services to exercise human rights and fundamental freedoms, aid access to relevant information and strengthen safeguards.
• Challenges stemming from the exploitation of data, digital technologies and services as economic and governance commodities (e.g. through digitalisation of public services).
• Threats to human rights stemming from the exploitation of the information environment for mass surveillance and authoritarian practices, or illicit and criminal purposes (e.g. disinformation).

Recognising this context and its opportunities, threats and challenges, organisations active in capacity building can employ a range of approaches to help foster and safeguard human rights in the digital age. These can be broadly grouped into four categories – governance and regulation, technical interventions, education, and strategic communications – that provide different opportunities and options to achieve impact, and which are characterised by different strengths, weaknesses, and implementation requirements.

What can be done?

We identified several overarching principles that could inform and guide capacity-building efforts by organisations that aim to foster and strengthen safeguards for human rights in the digital age:

• Adopt a holistic approach to human rights and fundamental freedoms, moving away from a distinction between capacity-building initiatives with a digital focus and those aimed at more traditional concepts of human rights.

• Ensure that policy initiatives support and resonate with international engagement work to foster and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms.

• Develop a strategic approach and overarching framework to guide initiatives focusing on human rights and fundamental freedoms. These should identify:

  • overarching priorities and desired impact to achieve through a portfolio of initiatives and;
  • criteria for choosing individual initiatives to ensure their relevance to the overall strategic vision.

• Build on established principles and good practices for the delivery of individual interventions to maximise their impact, sustainability, effectiveness, and efficiency. Donor, funder and implementer organisations could:

  • consider adopting complex interventions that span multiple activities, objectives, and beneficiaries;
  • tailor interventions to local and regional contexts to aid local ownership and ensure adequate nuance in intervention activities and content;
  • ensure the adoption of inclusive, multi-stakeholder approaches to capacity-building intervention design and implementation;
  • incorporate comprehensive planning, risk assessment, and evaluation activities to mitigate potential unintended consequences and maximise learning, and;
  • embed tools for transferring knowledge, skills and competences in capacity-building initiatives and interventions.