escr

Community networks provide alternatives to infrastructure to access internet that is controlled by either companies or the state. In the remote area where Kondoa Community Network works, even patchy services have been helpful to ensure access to better education and medical services. 

Tiktok is a wildly popular short video platform and has led to a myriad form of creative and playful expressions. This article explores the videos from Ceylon in relation to heteronormativity, gender, and how the boundaries between the personal and public are blurred.

Food and in particular nutrition for children is a widely debated topic on social media, media and onground in India, and the reason for this is how caste plays a role. This article breaks down why the imposition of veganism or a savarna diet would harm children who are poor and do not have access to the same privileges as others.

This article explores mental health facilities in Kenya and if artificial intelligence can provide solutions for the dire need for infrastructure. Even if the use of artificial intelligence poses a solution to this, there are risks for data and privacy, algorithmic bias and large scale misdiagnosis. AI can only work when alongside human and humane treatment.

What is the impact of the social media tax in Uganda on the lives of ordinary people - including their productivity and income, access and usage of social media and the internet. Through interviews and discussions, the report explores how people are affected by the tax on the use of platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter.

Can technology-based solutions improve the quality of life for people with disabilities? Srinidhi Raghavan interviews various women who talk about how mobile phone usage has benefitted them in terms of communication and social interaction, but also about their real concerns around privacy.

Interview with Y.K. Chang who has recently been appointed as the Personal Information Protection Commission in South Korea - one of the first few women from civil society to reach this position within government in the country and possibly the region. GenderIT interviewed her on her journey, her ambitions for her new position and what she sees as the grave problems regarding privacy and security…

The non-territorial, transborder Internet has added layers of complexity to the human rights debate. The idea of substantive equality – a compass for human rights and the key to gender justice – must be interpreted anew and afresh, as the force of digital technologies complicates the nature of social relations and institutions. The easy binary divisions of online and offline cease to make sense…

The GISWatch report 2016 looks at the link between economic, social, cultural (ESC) rights and the internet in several countries, and from a multitude of systems of governance, whether that of socialism and the welfare state, or the semi-functional welfare schemes in parts of Asia and Africa (Uganda, Cambodia), and even the relatively privileged parts of the world, like Spain. Here is a synthesis…

Economic, social, cultural rights in international law is a recognition of the basic rights of all people to a fundamentally decent and happy life - one in which their right to self-determination is respected. Does the progressively digitised future threaten or cement a world where ESC rights are guaranteed for all? In this editorial, Nadine Moawad states that the network is good and the network…