RightsCon Tunis 2019

An interactive discussion on challenging “geographies of discrimination” that will bring a perspective from the “Global South” to ,e.g., (1) international trade and investment agreements negotiations, (2) the Sustainable Development Goals implementation, (3) the United Nations and regional human rights mechanisms work, and (4) ensuring accountability to the Global South for decision-making and governance of digital technologies. Digital technologies can contribute to the realization of human rights, including the right to development. They also present great challenges by building a brave new world and a highly unequal one. Digital divides and closing gaps can be addressed in terms of access to and affordability of digital technologies and platforms in developing countries. However, “the big data divide” is a far larger gap. This is the divide between those who generate data and those who collect, store and use data, the former excluded from access to data, expertise and processing power, power which is increasingly opaque, indecipherable and too vast. This is not a question of privacy or protection alone, but one of discrimination and powerlessness. The session will debate challenges to closing geographic digital divides, in what is a highly uneven, under-regulated playing field rife in money, profits and big monopolies.