International

The past year was marked by armed conflicts and humanitarian crises that exposed the fraying of international protections for civilians and the devastating human cost when they are flouted,

A total of 361 journalists were behind bars on 1 December 2024, the second-highest number since the global record set in 2022.

The report highlights direct testimonies from Palestinian influencers, journalists, and media outlets who have faced Meta’s discriminatory practices.

RSF’s 2024 global round-up reveals rise in journalists killed and imprisoned

The report details the array of tactics employed by the Algerian government to silence dissent beyond its borders, drawing troubling parallels to authoritarian practices of countries like China and Egypt.

The #MeToo movement to empower women’s voices spurred the creation of new media outlets, revisions to newsroom policies, and the development of new journalist networks. Yet investigating women’s rights remains dangerous.

The report found over 228 violations of press freedom, and at least eight journalists remain arbitrarily imprisoned.

7amleh’s report exposes bias against Palestinian rights advocacy in tech, urging companies to protect employees’ freedom of expression.

Azerbaijan is carrying out a vicious attack on government critics, independent groups, and media. The crackdown has intensified just months before Azerbaijan is to host COP29, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which opens in Baku on 11 November 2024.

A study of the evolving disinformation landscape identifies key protagonists involved in the pushback and the tactics they employ to curb the escalating challenge.

Authoritarian governments around the world are restricting freedom of movement in retribution for political activism and dissent, subjecting people to a variety of repressive tactics, including travel bans, revocation of citizenship, confiscation of passports. 

SMEX examines platform content moderation policies for sexual and reproductive health and rights in the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region.

On World Poetry Day, PEN International released this report, highlighting challenges for writers in global conflicts and emphasizing the need to safeguard freedom of expression, especially in war-torn regions.

An average of 23 violent or hateful pieces of content were published against Palestinians every minute after 7 October, reports 7amleh.

More than three quarters of the 99 journalists and media workers killed worldwide in 2023 died in the Israel-Gaza war, the majority of them Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza. The conflict claimed the lives of more journalists in three months than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year.

Journalists who cover climate and environmental stories are targeted by powerful private and state actors who are willing to go to great lengths to protect their lucrative interests linked to environmentally harmful activities.

“The international system that we rely on to protect human rights is under threat as world leaders look the other way when universal principles of human rights are violated.”

Human Rights Watch found that the problem stems from flawed Meta policies and their inconsistent and erroneous implementation, overreliance on automated tools to moderate content, and undue government influence over content removals.

The report provides an overview on the reality of the Israeli surveillance systems industry, outlines its impact on the human rights of Palestinians and implications worldwide.

Journalists living in exile face assault, harassment, and unlawful deportation at the hands of the governments they fled.

In this report, EFF explores a new approach to tackling online harms leaving behind strategies based on ill-conceived bills and censorship-driven solutions.

When PEN America and Meedan asked writers, journalists, and creators about their experiences reporting online abuse to social media platforms, thet heard again and again, over the past three years, about the deep frustration, exasperation, and harm caused by the reporting mechanisms themselves.

Freedom House has found that while innovations in AI contributed to the 13th consecutive year of global decline in internet freedom, older forms of digital repression continued to proliferate.

As London hosts the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit, ARTICLE 19 releases a new briefing assessing the progress made towards meeting the SDG on freedom of expression and access to information.

Analysis of selected court decisions from across the globe.

Perpetrators from a total of 20 states were responsible for 79 incidents of physical transnational repression last year, including the first documented cases originating in Djibouti and Bangladesh.

Marking 50 years in the struggle for democracy

PI welcomes the inclusion of a provision on confidentiality and privacy. But there are still significant gaps in the zero draft which need to be addressed to ensure the treaty puts the respect and protection of human rights at the centre of the prevention and response to future pandemics including ensuring the effective regulation of the private-sector entities.

Lesbian, bisexual, and queer (LBQ+) women and non-binary people around the world face violence from security forces, family members, and others, along with widespread discrimination that prevents them from building relationships, homes, and families, Human Rights Watch said in the report.

This report aims to capture the full complexity of how encryption affects children’s lives. It sets out principles for an approach to encryption that recognises and respects the full range of their rights.

A New Model for Global Leadership on Human Rights

This database contains information about journalists who have been killed in connection with their work. This could mean journalists who in IPI’s assessment have been directly targeted in retaliation for their work or journalists who have been killed while reporting, including while covering armed conflict.

A record total of 533 journalists are currently detained worldwide, according to the annual round-up of violence and abuses against journalists published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). The number of those killed has increased again this year – to 57– while 65 journalists are being held hostage and 49 are missing.

To build on the current momentum, while advancing support for the international justice system worldwide, Human Rights Watch has set out a “checklist” of five areas for action that all governments can take.

The Declaration of Principles for content and platform governance in times of crisis is an effort to advance consistent and rights-respecting principles for companies to respond appropriately to crises and meet their obligations and responsibilities under international human rights law.

The Unfreedom Monitor is a project to analyze, document, and report on the growing use of digital communications technology to advance authoritarian governance around the world.

This report was written against the backdrop of the need to better understand the dynamics of impunity and the factors that contribute to solving cases of journalist murders on the domestic level. Although cases of full justice are scarce, they demonstrate that justice can be achieved.

No one has been held to account in nearly 80% of journalist murders during the last 10 years, CPJ’s 2022 Global Impunity Index found, and governments show little interest in tackling the issue.

Countering an authoritarian overhaul of the internet

In a new report, Privacy International explores the human rights implications of end-to-end encryption, and rejects proposals by governments, intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies for access to the content of or the banning of this type of communication.

This report presents a summary analysis of research on current practices of content moderation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia ‘harmful content’ such as ‘hate speech ’, and Kenya, with a specific focus on and disinformation.

Physical transnational repression is only the tip of an iceberg. Digital threats, spyware, and coercion by proxy means that – for millions of people around the world – transnational repression has become a common and institutionalised practice.

Writers and public intellectuals have been unjustly locked up for their exercise of free expression; dozens are currently serving sentences of 10 years or more for their words.

Submission in response to the call for comments by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights as input for the report on internet shutdowns and human rights to the fiftieth session of the Human Rights Council in June 2022.

Read the BASICS to find out how online surveillance works. Dive into our TOOL GUIDES for instructions to installing our pick of the best, most secure applications. We have more detailed information in our FURTHER LEARNING sections. If you’d like a guided tour, look for our list of common SECURITY SCENARIOS.

According to the RSF annual round-up published today, a record number of journalists – 488, including 60 women – are currently detained worldwide, while another 65 are being held hostage.

No one has been held to account in 81% of journalist murders during the last 10 years, CPJ’s 2021 Global Impunity Index has found.

In the high-stakes battle between states and technology companies, the rights of internet users have become the main casualties. A growing number of governments are asserting their authority over tech firms, often forcing the businesses to comply with online censorship and surveillance.

Today, governments across the globe are arguing for new powers to regulate the internet within their countries’ borders for national security, economic health, and other fundamental reasons.

If implemented responsibly, AI has the potential to promote the enjoyment of human rights. However, there is a real risk that commercial and state use has a detrimental impact on human rights

Privacy International (PI) welcomes the call for submissions by the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression to inform the Special Rapporteur’s report on ‘disinformation’ and freedom of expression. The issues highlighted in the call for submissions are ones that PI with its global network of partners3 has been investigating as part of its work on the use of personal data, and the hidden ecosystem involved, in the online political campaigning context.

PEN America’s Writers at Risk Database is a searchable catalog of the writers, journalists, artists, academics, and public intellectuals under threat around the world. The database includes historical cases PEN America has worked on from 1987 onwards; non-active cases are color-coded black.

To mark International Women’s Day, RSF has published this report that reveals the extent of the dangers of sexist and sexual violence for women journalists, and its impact on journalism.

The Global Scale and Scope of Transnational Repression

In creating this manual, ARC aspires to offer concrete recommendations and provide a comprehensive tool kit to help artists navigate, counter, and overcome threats and persecution.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has tallied 50 cases of journalists killed in connection with their work in 2020 (from 1 January to 15 December).

Incremental progress toward reducing the murders of journalists worldwide is fragile and could be thwarted by legal appeals and lack of political leadership, CPJ found in its latest report on impunity in retaliatory media killings.

The coronavirus pandemic is accelerating a dramatic decline in global internet freedom. For the 10th consecutive year, users have experienced an overall deterioration in their rights, and the phenomenon is contributing to a broader crisis for democracy worldwide.

The COVID-19 pandemic has fueled a crisis for democracy around the world. Since the coronavirus outbreak began, the condition of democracy and human rights has grown worse in 80 countries.

Access to information is fundamental for women’s empowerment. States and other stakeholders should ensure women have full rights and facilities to access information as a mechanism to overcome gender inequality.

In recent years, social media platforms have been taking down online content more often and more quickly, often in response to the demands of governments, but in a way that prevents the use of that content to investigate people suspected of involvement in serious crimes, including war crimes.

This report examines the ways in which Beijing’s censors have affected and influenced Hollywood and the global filmmaking industry.

The global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented lockdown to protect citizens in almost all countries in the world is enormous. Apart from the economic, political and societal consequences, it exposes and exacerbates all inequalities that existed before and it discriminates more against those who were already marginalized.

Writers and intellectuals are often among the canaries in the coal mine who, alongside journalists and human rights activists, are first targeted when a country takes a more authoritarian turn.

In responding to the COVID-19 outbreak, many governments have taken measures that limit access to information held by public bodies relating to the pandemic and other crucial areas of public interest.

The Committee to Protect Journalists submitted a call to several U.N. special mandate holders encouraging them to join CPJ’s effort to secure the release of all jailed journalists globally in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.

This document provides an overview of human rights concerns posed by the coronavirus outbreak, drawing on examples of government responses to date, and recommends ways governments and other actors can respect human rights in their response.

Freedom of expression has been one of the casualties of the epidemic, as some governments have used censorship, arrests and the application of repressive laws to address these challenges and control public narratives about the crisis.

An analysis of what Facebook, Google, and Twitter have done to provide users with political ad transparency as of September 2019.

Repressive governments use sophisticated digital censorship and surveillance alongside more traditional methods to silence independent media. A special report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to revolutionise societies in positive ways. However, as with any technological advancement, there is a real risk that the use of new tools by states or corporations will have a negative impact on human rights.

Once a year the PEN International produces a case list (covering the previous year) of individuals around the world who are detained or otherwise persecuted for their peaceful political activities or for the practice of their profession.

In 2018, Freedom in the World recorded the 13th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The reversal has spanned a variety of countries in every region, from long-standing democracies like the United States to consolidated authoritarian regimes like China and Russia. The overall losses are still shallow compared with the gains of the late 20th century, but the pattern is consistent and ominous. Democracy is in retreat.

Previous research has shown how 42.55 percent of free apps on the Google Play store could share data with Facebook, making Facebook the second most prevalent third-party tracker after Google’s parent company Alphabet.1 In this report, Privacy International illustrates what this data sharing looks like in practice, particularly for people who do not have a Facebook account.

Our series of interviews with privacy and gender rights activists across the world reflect nuanced and context specific experiences of the right to privacy.

Organized crime knows no borders, scorns the rule of law in democracies, and leaves little choice to journalists, who have limited resources and are extremely vulnerable. The only choice for reporters is often to say nothing or risk their lives.

The internet is growing less free around the world, and democracy itself is withering under its influence.

New technologies continue to present great risks and opportunities for humanitarian action. To ensure that their use does not result in any harm, humanitarian organisations must develop and implement appropriate data protection standards, including robust risk assessments.

In this report RSF sheds light on the latest danger for journalists – threats and insults on social networks that are designed to intimidate them into silence.

Exposing and Challenging Government Hacking for Surveillance

While AI impacts a plethora of rights, ARTICLE 19 and Privacy International are particularly concerned about the impact it will have on the right to privacy and the right to freedom of expression and information.

Covering women’s issues does not come without danger. A female editor was murdered for denouncing a sexist policy. A reporter was imprisoned for interviewing a rape victim. A woman reporter was physically attacked for defending access to tampons, while a female blogger was threatened online for criticizing a video game. For International Women’s Day, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) wants to turn the spotlight on violence against journalists covering these issues. This report does not address the status of women journalists, equal employment of women in journalism or sexist (or non-sexist) attitudes in the media. These issues have been widely covered and debated elsewhere. This report focuses specifically on threats and violence against both men and women reporters covering women’s rights.

Six case studies on Facebook’s internet “On Ramp” initiative from Africa, Asia and Latin America

The Report examines the progress countries have made since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals on implementing the commitment to make access to information available to all people in their countries.

In this special briefing for International Women’s Day 2017, Privacy International explores through the work of the Privacy International Network some areas of concern being addressed in relation to privacy, surveillance, women’s rights, and gender.

With populist and nationalist forces making significant gains in democratic states, 2016 marked the 11th consecutive year of decline in global freedom.

Internet freedom has declined for the sixth consecutive year, with more governments than ever before targeting social media and communication apps as a means of halting the rapid dissemination of information, particularly during anti-government protests.

IFJ report highlights high levels of gender discrimination and violence against women in the media

With the environment now recognized as a major challenge for humankind, Reporters Without Borders believes that particular attention should be paid to the journalists who take greats risk to investigate sensitive, environment-related subjects. The report highlights a steady deterioration in the situation for environmental reporters, who are increasingly exposed to many kinds of pressure, threats and violence.

The Cross Community Working Party on ICANN’s Corporate and Social Responsibility to Respect Human Rights (CCWP-HR) prepared this paper for presentation and discussion at ICANN54 in Dublin in October 2015. This paper is intended to build on and complement the previous reports published by the Council of Europe and ARTICLE 19 on ICANN’s responsibility to respect human rights.

The need to regulate the transfer of surveillance technologies that pose a risk to human rights has been largely recognised by EU institutions and some EU member states. It is no longer a question of if the EU should do more in this area, but how.

In this report, ARTICLE 19 seeks to outline the implications of anonymity and encryption for the right to freedom of expression in the digital age.

Civil Society and Private Sector perceptions

Highly publicized murders of journalists heighten awareness of the grave dangers that reporters and photographers face around the world. Less widely known are the myriad other risks to journalists, including imprisonment, cyberattacks, harassment, frivolous lawsuits, and censorship.

Discarding Democracy: Return to the Iron Fist

There are far too many countries where news and content providers constantly face a very special and formidable form of censorship, one exercised in the name of religion or even God. And with increasing frequency, this desire to thwart freedom of information invokes the hard-to-define and very subjective concept of the “feelings of believers.”

From August 28 to October 15, 2014, PEN American Center carried out an international survey of writers1 , to investigate how government surveillance influences their thinking, research, and writing, as well as their views of government surveillance by the U.S. and its impact around the world.

As the United Nations reflects on the future of global development and the post-2015 agenda, access to information must be recognised as critical to supporting governments to achieve development goals, and enabling citizens to make informed decisions to improve their own lives. IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, believes that libraries help guarantee that access.

Internet intermediaries – such as internet service providers, search engines and social media platforms – play a crucial role in enabling people around the world to communicate with each other. Because of their technical capabilities, internet intermediaries are under increasing pressure from governments and interest groups to police online content.

Global press freedom has fallen to its lowest level in over a decade, according to the latest edition of Freedom House’s press freedom survey. The decline was driven in part by major regression in several Middle Eastern states, including Egypt, Libya, and Jordan; marked setbacks in Turkey, Ukraine, and a number of countries in East Africa; and deterioration in the relatively open media environment of the United States.

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue

International human rights law provides a clear and universal framework for the promotion and protection of the right to privacy, including in the context of domestic and extraterritorial surveillance, the interception of digital communications and the collection of personal data. Practices in many States have, however, revealed a lack of adequate national legislation and/or enforcement, weak procedural safeguards, and ineffective oversight, all of which have contributed to a lack of accountability for arbitrary or unlawful interference in the right to privacy.

Which companies stand with their users, embracing transparency around government data requests? Which companies have resisted improper government demands by fighting for user privacy in the courts and on Capitol Hill? In short, which companies have your back?

By their very nature, libraries are poised to become forces for social change and using this exhibit as an example, libraries themselves can show the life of their communities by putting their responses on display to support their involvement in social movements, engage others, and document for the future

Privacy International’s report identifies recent accomplishments from around the world, and highlights significant challenges ahead for this right

For the fourth consecutive year, the IPA and PricewaterhouseCoopers have carried out a global survey on the application of VAT on printed books and e-books. It reveals that much progress remains for countries to adopt a non-discriminatory, consistent tax regime for printed and e-books.

World Report 2014 is Human Rights Watch’s 24th annual review of human rights practices around the globe. It summarizes key human rights issues in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide, drawing on events through November 2013

This publication provides an overview of the main international standards relevant to the protection of the right to freedom of expression in relation to Information Communication Technologies. It identifies international and regional standards for the protection of key areas of concern, including content regulation, the rights of citizen journalists and bloggers, and access to information

Homosexual propaganda bans, freedom of expression and equality

Crisis in East Africa

CPJ’s analysis identifies Eritrea, North Korea, Syria, Iran as worst

CPJ’s 2012 Impunity Index spotlights countries where journalists are slain and killers go free

Crackdowns on Protests Cause Big Changes to Index Positions