Privacy Talk with Marielza Oliveira, UNESCO Director for Digital Inclusion, Policies and Transformation, in the Communication and Information Sector: What is your strategic planning from 2023 in UNESCO?
“This interview recorded on 20th December 2022 is talking about digital human rights and freedom of expression.”
Kohei is having great time discussing digital human rights and freedom of expression.
This interview outline:
- How is the option for journalist to protect their privacy?
- What is your strategic planning from 2023 in UNESCO?
- Message to listeners
・How is the option for journalist to protect their privacy?
Marielza: You touched on an incredibly important topic: media. Because we live in a world of massive information online, we need to make sure that when people access information, they’re actually accessing reliable information.
Unfortunately, a lot of it is what people call fake news, it’s misinformation or disinformation. |It may also behate speech and attempts at radicalization, in cyberspace. There is also a lot of cyber scams and other cybersecurity issues.
Thus people need to learn how to protect themselves. You may know that we do have a Media and Information Literacy curriculum for Ministries of Education, and work with the Ministry of Education in many different countries, in order for them to embed this curriculum on media and information literacy across all education levels, to help teachers and students, as well as parents, to acquire the skills to protect themselves.
But that’ is not enough. We actually need of support the different types of information providers that provide reliable information, and of course, media is one of the critical ones.
But the media is also being threatened in many different ways.
First, we do research on the safety of journalists. We have appalling, appalling statistics, like 73% of women journalists are threatened, harassed online.
And, of those, 20% actually ended up attacked physically in real life. Literally, one in seven women journalists actually get attacked, just because they’re doing their job.
That’s also even worse for what is called intersectional situation when they are black women or they are latino women and other minorities. Of course, that happens to men as well, in less of a proportion, but it happens.
So protection of the safety of journalists, promoting the safety of journalists, is one of the key areas of work of UNESCO. We also support the development of media, so that we have pluralistic, inclusive media. Reliable information being produced by media is a tremendous, tremendous importance for us.
We have a Section, one of our teams in the Communications and Information Sector, that works exactly on that: on the freedom of expression and safety of journalists.
So they do quite a lot of different things, including supporting the development of regulatory frameworks that protect safety of journalists.
This team leads the the United Nations Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists, that this year completes 10 years. We are also very happy that we celebrate, every year, the “World Press Freedom Day”.
We do a lot of different things, like for example, in conflict settings, distribute press vests that are bulletproof, to help protect the lives of journalists.
We also keep a database of journalists that have been killed, around the e world. It’s a terrible, terrible statistic: every five days or so another journalist dies.
We’re not talking about those who die of old age or an accident, we’re talking about those who are killed because they were exercising their profession.
We denounce these crimes and keep monitoring the prosecution of such crimes against journalists. We have an actual “Day”, that we call the, “ International Day for ending Impunity for crimes against journalists” for us to raise awareness of these issues around the world.
This is a big and very sad, terrible part of our job. We hope that one day will no longer have to do it. And this has everything to do with issues of privacy, as quite a lot of these journalists are subject to tremendous surveillance, including spyware being embedded in their communication devices, to monitor them, track them.
That’s how many ended up being exposed, and beaten up, jailed and killed,. So because of these privacy issues,these expression issues, a lot of women journalists, because they are harassed, end up leaving the profession.
So you lose important “voices” as well. Protecting and promoting freedom of expression through support to media is incredibly important to democracy, to social cohesion, to actually enable us to have reliable information on which to make decisions as a society, as media provides to us.
Kohei: Thank you for sharing the great insight. I think it’s very important to democratic decisions. We are now able to make sure that without any information from the journalistic freedom of expression is very important to make a judgment property and to maintain all the democratic actions.
So yeah, we should discuss what kind of solution we provide it on the internet based on society. I think UNESCO has varieties of the initiative at this moment.
Then the next year 2023, is also the very important year for you. On the UNESCO website, you released their model of the regulatory framework. Could you share us what this means of the framework ? And what are you planning on the strategic 2023 in in the UNESCO?
- What is your strategic planning from 2023 in UNESCO?
And you know this has become incredibly important, because even though digital platforms are fantastic tools when it comes to people communicating and learning and engaging and keeping in touch with each other, they also have been used to spread misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, conspiracy theories, and all kinds of different harmful content that really affects very negatively human rights and dignity, democracy, social cohesion. You know,disinformation and misinformation have actually killed.
We know that anti-vaccine movement, climate denialism, is killing people. Also disinformation is changing political systems tremendously. What we need to do is to address this tremendous harm and build an internet that can actually work for trust; one where people can trust the information they find.
The problem exists because current regulatory systems have not really been set up to address these issues. And so we decided to tackle this problem, as UNESCO has a mandate to protect freedom of expression, access to information and to support a human rights-based digital transformation.
So we actually are convening this global conference to implement this mandate, bringing together ministers, regulators, judicial actors, private sector, UN entities, academia, all kinds of different organizations, big tech companies and so on, so that we can together discuss how we tackle these issues: How do we shape digital platforms through regulation, through co-regulation, self-regulation, through different types of mechanisms, to really support freedom of expression, while eliminating this scourge of misinformation and disinformation, hate speech, and so on.
And of course, that is important because many countries have yet to develop regulatory frameworks to address these issues. There’s even some approaches to developing regulation that are not really aligned with international human rights standards, and have actually ended up suppressing freedom of expression. Others have not even been effective in dealing with this kind of harmful content.
And in several countries have good regulation but very limited capacity, to enforce and monitor the results of their regulation. So what we’re doing is bringing together a multistakeholder community that really can discuss and arrive at guidance on how to effectively address this kind of harmful content on the internet, so that we can protect freedom of expression, access to information and trust in the digital ecosystem.
Kohei: It’s very important to cooperate together with the different backgrounds, different sectors to come to be coordinated of the more universal principles to more peaceful actions, so it’s gonna be a very significant role with you then your team to work on this hard work.
So lastly, could you share any message for listeners, I think your work is very important to include human rights for all actions so it’s a very important message from you.
- Message to listeners?
Marielza: Thank you very much. You know, what I would say you know, to everyone, is that, it’s really important that we promote and protect human rights and dignity online. Just as it’s promoted and protected offline. They are the same.
There’s no space in which you know, digital human rights do not apply. Through every human activity, whether or not it takes place in cyberspace and in a particular physical location, we are all endowed with inalienable human rights, and we should all be striving to protect them.
So, take a look at what UNESCO is doing. See how you can contribute. Visit the UNESCO website, and contribute to this work, spread the idea that we should all be working together to ensure peace really happens through the free flow of ideas by word and image, whether ideas manifest in in digital spaces or physical spaces. Also thank you very much, and thanks to the Japanese community.
I just want to express tremendous appreciation for how we work very closely together with Japan, for example, in preserving and digitizing important archives,is one of the areas of work for which we are incredibly grateful to Japan for its support, and we hope to see Japanese stakeholders participating in the regulatory conference next year. Thank you.
Kohei: Thank you for their very wonderful message and thank you for your notice. Again, Thank you for having this moment in the Christmas season. I hope you have a great time in Paris then. Let’s see it again soon.
Marielza: Thank you have a peaceful holiday, a restful holiday in 2023. See you soon. Thank you Kohei. Arigato.
Kohei: Thank you.
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