At the side event held on the margins of the 63rd session of the Human Rights Council, UNESCO and the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) launched a new issue brief, Strengthening NHRI action online and offline through ROAM-X and Human Rights Impact Assessments in the digital age. Co-sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Australia to the United Nations in Geneva, the event brought together over 100 participants.
Opening the discussion, Clare Walsh, Australia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, noted that “new and emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, are transforming our societies at an unprecedented pace, and NHRIs are at the forefront of protecting human rights in the digital environment”. This requires a human rights-based approach to technology, geared toward safeguarding people, preventing harm and responding to violations.
The German Commission for UNESCO shared lessons from applying ROAM-X in Germany, and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights presented a civic space perspective. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission showed how human rights complaints, from phone seizures to newsroom raids, could be grouped under ROAM-X themes.
Public debate and civic engagement increasingly take place on digital platforms, requiring National Human Rights Institutes (NHRIs) to address threats to freedom of expression and the safety of journalists, while handling cases of online harassment, misuse of personal data and surveillance. These risks particularly affect women, minorities, persons with disabilities, as well as rural, Indigenous and linguistic communities. To help NHRIs handle these issues, the UNESCO-GANHRI brief analyses two complementary frameworks: Internet Universality ROAM-X Indicators and Protecting critical voices: guidance for human rights impact assessment on digital platforms.
ROAM-X principles (Rights, Openness, Accessibility and Multistakeholder participation) assess whether the national Internet environment enables human rights, while the Guidance evaluates whether platforms are addressing their impacts. Together, they can provide policy advice to NHRIs, and strengthen their capacity in monitoring, handling complaints and reporting to the Universal Periodic Review.
At the meeting in Geneva, UNESCO and GANHRI reaffirmed their commitment to jointly support NHRIs in deploying these tools, which offer the knowledge and resources necessary to build internal capacity on issues like platform governance, privacy, surveillance and artificial intelligence.
read more: https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/how-strengthen-human-rights-digital-age?hub=701
