Education and Technology Hub

beijing yiprenping center

February 12, 2010 mtadros

Sitting next to me at A2k4 is Lu Jun, Chief Coordinator of the Beijing Yipenping Center in China. He is here on a three-year fellowship at Yale’s Law School. The Center works on public health and right to education. It also works on policy advocacy and the legal protection against discrimination in employment.

Jun tells me both Facebook and Twitter are banned in China. At Yale, he is visiting NGOs, scholars and activists and attending these type of conferences and events in the area and around campus. He dissemintate information about issues in China with other scholars interested in Chinese issues and activism.

technologies of dissent – a2k4

February 12, 2010July 12, 2017 mtadros

What are examples of online technology and expression that may be empowered or made vulnerable? How are governments responding to these new forms of dissent? Is there anything truly new about these forms of protest versus more traditional forms?
What is the nature of the technical architecture that enables these new types of democratic expression and protest? In what ways can the same technologies be used to violate human rights? Is there a human right to any particular form of technology, or rights vis a vis technology?
What is the role of corporate social responsibility in relationship to Internet freedom? To what extent should we be concerned about private control over new forms of dissent and speech, as well as government control?
What is the role of government investment in telecommunications, universal access and closing the digital divide, and infrastructure design as human rights issues? Does freedom of expression require positive government efforts to extend technological access and what would these look like? [source: http://yaleisp.org/2010/02/a2k4dissent/]

intellectual property and a2k

February 12, 2010August 12, 2018 mtadros

Ahmed Abdel Latif, illness International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development

A2K was born out of frustration of lack of knowledge. Intellectual property – the system of exclusion of rights is not a human right. One enters a trap. Intellectual property rights people tried to push those rights in A2K and there was a lack of progress in this debate. There is a primacy of the diffusion of culture. The protection of moral and material rights of others is important. There is a possiblity of progress.

There is a complimentarity of the two movements is important to emphasize. We have not done enough to formulate a human rights discourse in this regard. The rights of users and the rights of consumers as well as the rights of the visually impaired etc. They need to look at the convention on the rights of the disabled.

There is very powerful human rights language that provides momentum to the A2K movement.

The WIPO development agenda does not mention a2k specifically but it can be developed as a framework for that. The issue of climate change can also benefit from access to knowledge.

How do we operationalize and translate this a2k to concrete guidelines that need to be advanced and presented. Much more can be done.

a2k: Kauffman Foundation and NY Law School

February 12, 2010 mtadros

a2k4 logo

Ewing Marion, Kauffman Foundation:

If a2k partners with the human rights movement they have to deal with states as repressive or as supportive players. Objectives might diverge and therefore there is potential for both movements to be together.

Molly Beutz Land, New York Law School

Making argument to why both movements need each other and how they can capitalize on their strengths. Human rights advocates need a2k theories. They have failed to look consistently to access to information for the protection of human rights. There is a connection between human rights knowledge and human rights violations. They have not focused on access to technological infra-structure. There is a historical isolation of those two movements from each other.

A2K is also access to info about health, women’s rights, etc. Those who do not have access to technology of info that is necessary and not just that is available although this is very important. The A2K movement has more difficulty where the barriers to a2k are systemic, especially in regards to intellectual property. There are many reasons why education materials are not available to people around the world – no books, no trucks to move the books, no money to pay for them etc… But we could do more: use the legal framework that the human rights movement has developed. It requires the state to respect the rights of people in their jurisdiction and protect them as well. The state will also create conditions to fulfill that right on their behalf. HR movement recognizes States cannot do all this at once but nontheless States can take immediate steps eg. preventing discrimination etc.

The framework of State accountability is successful in the human rights movement. They were very successful in holding States accountable. We can therefore learn from each other and focusing on mutual strengths can give us new dimensions going forward.

Focus on health information requires the human rights movement to step back and look at it again in terms of access to information, mobile devices that allow doctors to send pics of x-rays etc… women’s rights also is helpful. Access to info is very important in all these cases to protect rights.

We can therefore develop approaches that help each other.

– A2K4 – perespectives on access to knowledge – APC

February 12, 2010 mtadros

Questions to be discussed in the panel:

What is the relevance of A2K and human rights to each other? Which substantive aspects of human rights – for example, health, education, food, freedom of expression, and cultural rights – are implicated by A2K issues and how? Which methodological and institutional approaches hold relevance?

Do the A2K and human rights approaches fit together easily or in tension? What unique insights can each offer the other? What would it mean to theorize A2K as a human right? Is access to knowledge better understood as a negative liberty or a positive entitlement?

Is the human rights framework – norms, institutions, and methodologies of advocacy – a useful one for advancing A2K goals? What are the risks, challenges, and opportunities involved in theorizing A2K as a human right? What venues, tools, allies and enemies might be acquired by this framing? [source: http://yaleisp.org/2010/02/a2k4perspectives/]

Jeremy Malcolm, Consumers International: A2K is about finding human rights dimensions to legal issues such as communication policies and intellectual properties etc. A2K is a framework for other human rights issues.

Natasha Primo, Association for Progressive Communications: APC was a network of ISPs and started working with progressive NGOs and mainly in South Africa. Its membership is spreading across the world.

What do these rights look like in the context of human rights? Access to info is also about access to tools which is access to infrastructure. APC outlined 7 themes: access to all, freed om of expression and association, access to knowledge, shared learning and creation – free and open source software and tech development, privacy, surveillance and encryption, governance of the internet, awareness, protection and realization of rights.

What is A2K? this evolved and now deals with intellectual rights etc. The right to access to knowledge, the right to freedom of information [national and gvt.], the right to access to publicly-funded information.

What then is the best strategy? A2K negative liberty or positive entitlement? should we step back from the human rights discourse and begin talking about development? is A2K a new right? interpreting an existing right in an information society contedst; claiming an existing right by pushing a human development agenda?

APC talks also about linguistic access – ability to impart knowledge in their own language.

Human rights or human development / human capabilities? There are development activists who claim human rights discourse is not useful – so do we then need to talk about development capabilities approach to social justice – including the rights-based approaches?

Key principles of human development and the capabilities approach:

must develop people’s capabilities to lead creative and fulfilling lives. Must allow us to examine the individual’s capacity for exercising choice of what to do and how to be without a context of real or substantive choice, rather than adaptive preferences. Should be the primary goal to economic development.

10 capabilities and t he international bill of rights.: ability to live life, bodily health, bodily integrity, being treated with dignity, etc.

Thinking of norms, institutions and methodologies for advocacy. Should we talk about human capabilities rather than human rights? how central is access to knowledge to human capabilities? what is the key challenge: to advocate for a new right or do we look at how realize existing rights and how we turn rights into capabilities? or both?