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Minority and Trends 2020 Indigenous Focus on technology 1 Editor’s preface: minorities, and the right to

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Minority and Indigenous Trends 2020

Focus on technology Cover: A protestor uses her smartphone to take photos of police officers blocking an intersection outside First Unitarian Church during a protest in Louisville, Kentucky, US, on 24 September 2020. The day before, a grand jury decided not to charge Kentucky police officers for the killing of Breonna Taylor, igniting a fresh wave of protests across the US. Credit: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Inside front cover: Portrait of a Yazidi woman in Duhok, Iraqi Kurdistan. Credit: Younes Mohammad

Inside back cover: Portrait of an Oromo man in Sheikh Hussein shrine in Oromia, Ethiopia. Credit: Eric Lafforgue / Alamy

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Minority Rights Group International 54 Commercial Street E1 6LT, This publication is funded by the United Kingdom. European Union and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. This content is Tel: +44 (0)20 7422 4200 the sole responsibility of Minority Rights Fax: +44 (0)20 7422 4201 Group International and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting Email: [email protected] the position of the European Union or Website: www.minorityrights.org the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. 3

Minority and Indigenous Trends 2020

Focus on technology

Edited by Peter Grant

Minority Rights Group International Table of Contents

6 Foreword

8 Executive summary and recommendations

16 Thematic Chapters 17 The threats of technology to minority and 42 Empowering minorities and indigenous peoples through technology 59 The challenges of technology and : Some reflections on the future of the SDGs for minorities and indigenous peoples

76 78 Cameroon: Confronting environmental injustice and illegal logging in the rainforest through indigenous-led technology 83 Democratic Republic of Congo: As global demand for cobalt soars, child miners pay the price 86 : For Turkana pastoralists struggling with drought, mobile finance offers a lifeline 89 Tanzania: For people with albinism, hate speech and have moved online

94 96 Central America: For migrants crossing national borders or connecting across ‘the wall’, communication technologies play a vital role 101 : Indigenous activists are finding ways to use technology to secure their rights – but barriers remain 104 : Equitable smart city design in San Francisco 110 United States: Confronting environmental degradation through indigenous activism 5

116 and 118 Cambodia: Protecting indigenous resources with a community-based monitoring app 122 China: International firms are benefitting from Chinese technologies used to persecute Uyghurs and other minorities 129 : The dissemination of misinformation on WhatsApp is driving vigilante violence against minorities 135 Nepal: For persons with from minority and indigenous communities, the greatest barrier to accessing assistive technologies is discrimination 141 Pacific: For indigenous communities, new seabed mining technologies could begin ‘the biggest land grab in history’ 146 : ‘The virus has turned every facet of life upside down’ — privacy and data protection concerns in the wake of Covid-19

150 Europe 152 : Digitalization to unlock human rights to sign language — Yes, but at what cost? 157 Bulgaria: Using information technologies to achieve positive change for Roma 162 Italy: Mining, migration and munitions in Sardinia — a linguistic minority struggles with economic decline 167 : Saami communities contend with the latest form of discrimination — ‘green ’

172 Middle East and North Africa 174 Egypt: Copts continue to suffer the effects of hate speech online 178 Iran: For religious minorities, biometric identity cards threaten to become a new tool for and discrimination 181 : Documenting human rights violations in conflict — the Ceasefire online reporting tool 185 Lebanon: For Syrian , discrimination is the greatest barrier to accessing Covid-19 testing Foreword

E. Tendayi Achiume

UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of , racial discrimination and and related intolerance

For minorities and indigenous peoples, technology has all too often been a tool of oppression. From the occupation of the Americas to the enslavement of millions of Africans and the abuses of colonial rule, technology has regularly been implicated in the control and exploitation of marginalized communities. In the process, their own and civilizations have also been devastated or erased. 7

Sadly, this problematic relationship between technology and discrimination persists to this day — from predictive policing algorithms and ‘smart’ migration management to and surveillance. The irony is that some of the most sophisticated innovations today are being used to entrench deep- seated historic inequalities. The technologies themselves may be cutting edge, but if they simply recreate old hierarchies in new ways, then they could take us back decades in terms of human rights.

Then there are further challenges around affordability, accessibility and other constraints that can prevent certain groups from enjoying any potential benefits. For instance, while assistive technologies such as wheelchairs can undoubtedly improve the lives of persons with disabilities, those belonging to minority or indigenous communities frequently struggle to secure them due to limited resources, official prejudice and added barriers around language, culture or geography that can reinforce these issues.

Is another future possible, one where technological progress can create equally progressive social outcomes? As this volume testifies, there are many examples of activists who are taking technologies into their own hands to achieve real and lasting change. When communities are able to access and use technologies from a place of equality and — such as the use of digital mapping for indigenous forest conservation and the mobilization of anti-racism protests through the #BlackLivesMatter movement — the results are genuinely exciting and transformative.

There is much discussion around the importance of a rights-based approach to technology, but there is a risk that this can at times sound like a constraint: a question primarily of checks and restrictions. In fact, the opposite is true — perhaps more than speed, bandwidth or other technical specifications, the true measure of a technology is inclusion, accessibility and non-discrimination. That, more than anything, is the surest way of promoting innovation, creativity and development for all, regardless of who they are. Foreword Executive summary

Technology increasingly permeates every aspect of our lives, from the use of big data to information and communication technologies (ICTs) to artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. These developments are often framed around issues such as efficiency, speed and innovation, but for minorities, indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups there are often very different forces at play – the replication of existing patterns of exclusion in new forms.

In a context where discrimination against minorities and indigenous peoples remains strong, technologies alone are not enough to deliver positive change. Indeed, without the appropriate checks and protections in place, they may side-line these communities even further. Consequently, there needs to be a renewed focus on human rights in the development, dissemination and use of technologies, and a greater awareness that, alongside their benefits, they have the potential to cause lasting harm.

While a central aim of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was to reduce social inequalities within societies, the outbreak of the Covid-19 has highlighted how profound gaps remain for minorities and indigenous peoples in many . Though there is much hope and uncertainty around the possibilities of ‘track and trace’ mobile applications and other emerging technologies to resolve the crisis, without a firm commitment to social justice and universal access it is likely that many will be denied their benefits.

With minorities and indigenous peoples disproportionately represented among the world’s poor, it is not surprising that poverty is itself a major barrier to these groups accessing mobile phones, computers and other technologies. Besides the issue of affordability, there may be physical and geographic constraints, particularly for communities in rural or remote locations. In addition, other hurdles such as limited 9

information in minority or indigenous languages and scripts can compound lack of access. For marginalized groups within minority and indigenous communities, such as persons with disabilities, further significant issues arise – for instance, whether websites are accessible and compatible with assistive technologies.

The need for a more holistic approach to technology is therefore more urgent than ever, with an emphasis not only on affordable pricing and accessible delivery, but also culturally appropriate and inclusive design. Importantly, an inclusive approach to technology should translate not only to equitable access as users, but also meaningful participation in technology and software development. At present, however, minority and indigenous employment in sectors such as computing remains extremely low, particularly at levels that influence design choices and decision making. This poses a fundamental challenge to the creation of more diversity friendly technologies downstream.

Without concerted efforts to ensure they have positive outcomes for minorities and indigenous peoples, technologies could instead reinforce their exclusion. This can happen as an unintended consequence of systems that rely on data that is itself informed by bias. In the United States (US) and elsewhere, for example, the use of automated recruitment systems by corporations has typically identified potential new employees based on profiles of previous successful applicants, with the result that those groups favoured in the past – in particular, men and white Americans rather than women and members of ethnic minorities – continue to receive preference.

When technologies are actively mobilized to target certain communities, however, there is the possibility of systematic human rights violations on a scale rarely realized until now. In , the Chinese has created a vast panopticon of surveillance, spanning DNA tests, virtual checkpoints and online monitoring to control and censor the millions of Uyghur Muslims in the region. Though this represents one of the most extreme examples of how technologies can be coopted to violate the human rights of marginalized communities en masse, many of these tools are being used in different forms elsewhere. In Europe, for instance, migration management in some countries has been given over to various technological ‘solutions’ such as facial scanning, spy drones and even lie detectors – an approach widely criticized for its dubious science as well as its disregard for human rights. Executive summary From biometric databanks to CCTV, surveillance is becoming more commonplace across the world, with deeply troubling implications for individual privacy, freedom of movement and other rights. Even when packaged innocuously, as in the growing trend towards ‘smart cities’ and the use of big data to achieve more efficient urban planning, some groups risk becoming even more marginalized. Minorities and indigenous peoples, who for centuries have contended with the negative impacts of technologies imposed on them by colonial , repressive regimes and global corporations, have good reason to be wary of the supposed benefits that technological change can bring.

This does not, however, mean that technological development is automatically against the interests of these communities. While the values and traditions of indigenous peoples in particular are often assumed to be in opposition to technology, there is a long history of indigenous invention and innovation that is still urgently relevant to some of today’s most pressing challenges, including . There are also many examples of how minority and indigenous communities, if given the chance to access new technologies and the training to use them on their own terms, have successfully exploited them to achieve significant social gains.

Indeed, some of the most inspiring examples of technology-driven activism are being pioneered by members of minority and indigenous communities. From citizen-led monitoring and reporting of human rights abuses in conflict zones to digital mapping of logging in communal forests, there is considerable opportunity for technologies to support land rights, document oppression and persecution, secure justice and empower community members. For this potential to be realized, though, an enabling and inclusive human rights environment must be in place: without this, minorities and indigenous peoples will be largely, once more, left behind. 11

The issues, then, extend far beyond the relative value of a particular technology. Many, if not most, have the capacity to deliver positive or negative outcomes, depending on how they are managed and used. This is illustrated clearly by the internet, where online hate speech against migrants, minorities and other stigmatized groups is commonplace and has been used to incite hatred and violence against them, up to and including , as was evident in the situation in affecting the Rohingya. But while social media platforms such as Twitter and have regularly been exploited by nationalist, extremist and far-right groups to spread hate, they have also served as a platform where some of the most transformative in recent years have mobilized. This is where the enormously influential #BlackLivesMatter protests first flourished, for instance, not only swelling the number of people engaged in its work but also laying the foundation for a far more diverse activism free from traditional organizational hierarchies.

There is widespread agreement that the coming years will be profoundly shaped by AI, automation and other innovations. What sort of future they usher in, however, depends on the decisions we make now. Human rights, equality and justice, must be at the heart of how we manage and develop these technologies. For minorities, indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups, the potential to achieve greater equality and recognition using technologies could be huge — but only if they are able to participate fully in every stage of that process themselves, from initial concept development to being full users and controllers of technology, data and online spaces. Executive summary RECOMMENDATIONS

Mainstream human rights for all into the development and dissemination of technologies, with a particular focus on the barriers that minorities and indigenous peoples face. This requires a more holistic examination of technologies that assesses their social, economic and political implications as well as their technical capabilities. Accessibility, affordability, appropriateness and availability should be a central part of their function, measured through clear data on the proportion of minority and indigenous community members able to use these technologies freely in ways that meet needs or address concerns. This is especially important for technologies involved in public service delivery, such as the increasing use of smartphones in educational settings and health care: in these circumstances, lack of access could exacerbate exclusion further.

Focus on improving minority and indigenous inclusion, not only as end users of technologies, but also upstream in their design and production. While it is vital to ensure that minority and indigenous community members are able to access available technologies, it is also important that their role extends beyond this to equitable participation in the production of these technologies at every stage of their development. At the moment, minority and indigenous representation in key sectors such as computer programming and software engineering remains very low. As a result, many members of these communities continue to be excluded from the economic benefits of employment in these fields, thereby entrenching existing power imbalances in society.

Promote a diverse and expansive approach to technology development that enables the creation of a wide range of products suitable for different communities. At present, there is a tendency for smart technologies, web platforms and other widely used tools to be monolingual, mono-script and designed around the needs, values and assumptions of the dominant majority, particularly its male members. This is unlikely to change until members of minorities, indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups, including women and people with disabilities, are able to contribute equitably to these processes. Among other measures, this means ensuring products are available in minority languages, including sign languages, and are culturally appropriate for different communities.

Conduct human rights impact assessments as a necessary first step whenever digital technologies are being considered for by public authorities. These impact assessments must include a focus on inclusion as well as non- discrimination. They should be carried out with the meaningful participation of all affected minorities and indigenous peoples, including representatives of marginalized groups within these communities, in their design and implementation. 13

This is particularly crucial when AI and predictive algorithms are being adopted for public decision-making. In such cases, algorithmic impact assessments should be conducted ahead of any introduction of an automated decision system. These should be updated when systems are upgraded, and the results made publicly available. All appropriate measures must be taken to mitigate risks identified through the impact assessments. With governments increasingly outsourcing technological development and delivery to companies and research institutions, it is vital that they are not able to outsource their human rights obligations as well.

Ensure accountability and independent oversight. Public authorities should only use digital systems that are auditable, in order to ensure that they are available for independent oversight. Legislation and administrative guidelines should be put into place making this a requirement in public tendering processes for the use of digital technologies.

Scrutinize the use of AI and automation in decision-making, with a focus on ensuring transparency and non-discrimination. This is especially important in areas such as suspect identification, prison sentencing, access to essential services, migration management and other issues of public decision-making where the human costs are high and the potential for bias, given past trends, is markedly high. Crucially, automated processes and their assumed objectivity should always be questioned, with the same review and accountability mechanisms that would accompany a human-led decision. Given the widespread involvement of private companies and academic institutions in the development of these technologies, it is also important that clear requirements are established to ensure good conduct, including ensuring that data on their impacts is transparent and publicly available. If companies or public agencies use an automated recruitment or service delivery system that replicates inequalities around ethnicity, religion, gender or as a result of their algorithms, then the outcome is still discriminatory and should be penalized as such.

Establish and enforce clear protocols on the collection, retention and use of personal data by governments, companies and other actors. Though privacy and freedom of movement are universal human rights concerns, the increasing use of biometric data, facial recognition and online monitoring to target particular groups has very direct relevance for minorities and indigenous peoples. While the Chinese government’s intrusive surveillance of millions of Uyghur Muslims in the name of security is an especially egregious example, similar patterns of discriminatory policing are emerging elsewhere. Even seemingly innocuous interventions justified by efficiency or cost effectiveness, such as the growing trend for ‘smart’ Recommendations development in cities, pose significant concerns for members of communities with a long history of discrimination against them. These issues have become even more pressing since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, as many technologies such as ‘track and trace’ applications could raise the danger of privacy intrusions if misused by governments or corporations.

Enshrine universal access to the internet as a right for all citizens, with a positive emphasis on accessibility and safety rather than censorship and surveillance. The importance of the internet as a source of information, social connections, employment opportunities and public services means that lack of provision can directly affect the ability to access many basic rights. Governments therefore have a responsibility to ensure that all their citizens have ready and secure access to the internet, with a particular emphasis on poor, remote or marginalized communities currently excluded from its benefits. Governments need to increase steps to ensure that online spaces and platforms are used constructively and are not exploited to mobilize hate against any section of their community, and in particular are not used to organize or incite violence linked to racism, religious tensions, gender or any other protected characteristic. Along with rights follow responsibilities, and educational services need to ensure that public knowledge about fake news, hate speech and its effects keeps pace with levels of access and usage. While this should include the creation and enforcement of anti-hate speech provisions in national legislation, particularly in relation to incitement to violence, governments should not use hate speech as a pretext to target activists and political opposition groups to silence dissent. Nor should they use the existence of hate speech to access private information stored or shared online. Regulatory authorities applying such laws must be demonstrably independent and accountable.

Abstain from imposing blanket internet shutdowns in the name of security, especially for protracted periods. Human rights law allows limitations to in certain very limited circumstances. There have been multiple instances of internet shutdowns where the test to justify intervention in freedom of speech (and an internet shutdown) has not been met. Any internet shutdown should be strictly limited to exceptional circumstances where there is strong evidence of imminent mass killings and where the internet is clearly playing an inciting role in those killings or attacks. Outside of these very narrowly defined exceptions, internet shutdowns are in breach of international standards on freedom of expression. These measures, being indiscriminate by nature, can effectively amount to a form of collective punishment and may increase impunity and insecurity by preventing the documentation and reporting of human rights abuses. 15

Businesses

Recognize that they have a responsibility to respect human rights and apply the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. ICT companies must act with due diligence and avoid the infringement of the rights of their users and the wider public. Human rights impact assessments must be undertaken at all stages, beginning at the conceptualization, design and testing stages of new technologies, including the algorithms and data sets that will be incorporated in them. Potentially discriminatory outcomes should be identified as much as possible in advance, with all necessary steps taken to prevent and mitigate them.

Establish clear and transparent protocols for content posted on social media platforms, especially concerning hate speech. These protocols should be drawn up in close consultation with representatives of minority and indigenous communities and other marginalized groups that may be targeted or otherwise affected. These protocols should also be specific and predictable, clearly informing users in advance, as well as assessed against the legality, necessity and proportionality principles set out in international standards concerning freedom of expression. Content moderation must take into account local contexts, including cultural and linguistic nuances, while remaining coherent and foreseeable. External complaints mechanisms should be established whereby users and others can draw attention to posts that contain hate speech, incite violence or are otherwise in breach of these protocols. Such complaints mechanisms should respond to and address complaints as quickly as possible. Content containing hate speech should be taken down within 24 hours. Platforms should be required to publish the average time between a report of hateful or dangerous speech and its removal at regular intervals, as well as statistics on the proportion of complaints that are upheld and denied. Recommendations Thematic Chapters 17 The threats of technology to minority and indigenous rights

Michael Caster

The global ‘digital divide’ continues to prevent ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples from accessing the internet and associated information and communication technologies (ICTs) that may support peace, and the promotion of human rights.

Imams and government officials pass under security cameras as they leave the Id Kah Mosque during a government organised trip in Kashgar, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China. / Ben Blanchard The threats of technology to minority and indigenous rights to technology of Thematic Chapters: The threats Sadly, patterns of exclusion and online, from Cameroon to West Papua. discrimination in everyday life are mirrored This can also complicate future attempts online; the United (UN) reports at accountability. In 2019 alone, the digital that nearly half the world’s is rights organization Access Now documented not connected to the internet,1 while the some 213 internet shutdowns. This includes Organisation for Economic Co-operation a 47 per cent increase across Africa, with and Development (OECD) estimates that Ethiopia identified as one of the worst the proportion of women using the internet offenders. However, India alone accounted is 12 per cent lower than that of men.2 for more than half of the total in 2019, with a single shutdown in Indian-controlled Globally, marginalized ethnic groups have Kashmir lasting for nearly six months. worse internet access than dominant ethnicities in the same country.3 This remains Even where access to the internet and other the case despite the UN Human Rights ICTs is not arbitrarily denied, minorities and Council (HRC) having stated back in 2011: indigenous peoples are frequently targets ‘Given that the Internet has become an of online hate speech and sophisticated indispensable tool for realizing a range of surveillance technologies. As noted in human rights, combating inequality, and 2019 by the UN Special Rapporteur on accelerating development and human freedom of opinion and expression, progress, ensuring universal access to the Internet should be a priority for all States.’4

While the internet and ICTs have great ! potential to challenge entrenched discrimination, the limited access of minorities ‘The prevalence of online hate and indigenous peoples to these technologies poses challenges to everyone, threatens to exacerbate their situation further. first and foremost the marginalized This is why abusive governments, especially across Asia, have increasingly turned to individuals who are its principal internet shutdowns to target certain ethnic targets.’ 5 Examples include parts and religious communities, taking away of Europe where online content their freedom of expression and ability to vilifying refugees and migrants document and disseminate evidence of ongoing human rights abuses. Intentionally has been correlated to physical shutting down or restricting access to the attacks against them, or the spread internet can in and of itself be a human rights of anti-Rohingya speech on violation, while also causing the proliferation of other rights abuses as it prevents victims Facebook in Myanmar which has from documenting and sharing them been tied to acts of genocide.’

1 UN ITU, ‘Statistics’, https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/stat/default.aspx 2 OECD, Bridging the Digital Gender Divide, 2018, p. 25. 3 Weidmann, N.B., Benitez-Baleato, S., Hunziker, P., Glatz, E. and Dimitropoulos, X., ‘Digital discrimination: political bias in internet service provision across ethnic groups’, Science, 353(6304), pp. 1151—5. 4 UN HRC, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Frank La Rue, A/HRC/17/27, 16 May 2011. 5 OHCHR, ‘Governments and internet companies fail to meet challenges of online hate — UN expert’, 21 October 2019. 19

Many such concerns remain unresolved and to a dramatic increase due to the lack of universally accepted in many countries of hate obligations by public and private actors, issues of transparency and crimes targeting religious, the poor implementation of existing ethnic and other minorities, human rights law in the digital age. including migrants.’

The impact of new technologies can UN Special Rapporteur on minority also be more insidious. For example, issues Fernand de Varennes, 20207 not only is big data and machine learning allowing for the automation of The role of social media in spreading human decision-making in governance hate speech is compounded when and criminal justice — a situation that social media is effectively your only risks replicating historical injustices access to the internet, such as with through algorithmic bias — but it is Free Basics, a Facebook product also increasingly leading to labour providing free limited internet access displacement, impacting particularly in developing markets. Myanmar on minority communities. In the is emblematic, as noted in the UN United States (US), a 2019 study by independent international fact-finding the Brookings think-tank noted that mission: ‘Facebook has been a useful the ‘average current-task automation instrument for those seeking to spread potential’ among Hispanics, Native hate, in a context where, for most users, Americans and black Americans Facebook is the Internet.’8 Online, was 47 per cent, 45 per cent and hate speech against Rohingya is rife, 44 per cent respectively, compared to including comparisons of Rohingya to 40 per cent among white Americans.6 animals, accusations that Rohingya stage human rights abuses against Social media themselves, and direct threats against and the internet them. According to one study, 1 in 10 of the social media posts by politicians ‘The last decade has seen of the Arakan National Party (ANP) minorities around the world contained hate speech. The ANP is the main party representing the dominant facing new and growing Rakhine in Rakhine State, threats, fuelled by hate and where most Rohingya lived prior to bigotry being spewed through their mass displacement in 2017-18. The most popular hate messages social media platforms… by members of the Rakhine State This has contributed to the parliament received 3,400 reactions rise of violent extremist groups or were shared up to 9,500 times.9

6 Muro, M., Maxim, R. and Whiton, J., Automation and Artificial Intelligence: How Machines Are Affecting People and Places, Washington, DC, Brookings, 2019, p. 44. 7 OHCHR, ‘UN expert denounces the propagation of hate speech through social media’, 27 February 2020. 8 OHCHR, Report of the Independent International Fact-finding Mission on Myanmar, 2018, p. 14. 9 Rajagopalan, M., Vo, L.T. and Soe, A.N., ‘How Facebook failed the Rohingya in Myanmar’,

Buzzfeed, 27 August 2018. minority and indigenous rights to technology of Thematic Chapters: The threats ! disseminate evidence of human rights abuses against Rohingya and other minority . This can have According to one study, long-term impacts on accountability. popular hate messages Here, arguably, the silencing of human rights abuses was not an unintended by members of the consequence but the specific aim Rakhine State parliament of the shutdown. Similar problems occurred in Sri Lanka following the in Myanmar received blocking of social media, purportedly 3,400 reactions or were to prevent the spread of rumours, shared up to 9,500 after the 2019 Easter massacre. times on social media. In India, there have been accusations that social media have been weaponized against non-Hindu minorities, leading to communal In response to such trends, in late violence. This is especially the case 2018, Facebook admitted they had not with WhatsApp, which has over 400 done enough to prevent their ‘platform million monthly active users in India. from being used to foment division On WhatsApp, Facebook and other and incite offline violence’, and vowed platforms, there has been a reported to do more to counter hate speech. increase in the spread of hate speech and disinformation portraying Muslim Meanwhile, in the name of combating citizens as terrorists or rapists, or ‘fake news’ or protecting national accusing them of plotting genocide security, the Myanmar government against the Hindu majority. Such has also at times blocked Facebook is the Hindu nationalist sentiment or shut down internet access in entire influencing the recent Citizenship minority townships in Rakhine and Amendment Act, discriminatory Chin states. Under , legislation that favours migrants freedom of expression and information from certain religious communities may only be restricted under narrowly (Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and defined circumstances: namely, Christian) for fast-tracked citizenship restrictions must be prescribed while conspicuously excluding by law with sufficient precision to Muslims. Its passage in December enable regulation; they must pursue 2019 was accompanied by protests a legitimate aim respecting other and communal violence. Videos of rights such as non-discrimination; predominantly Muslim minorities being and be necessary and proportionate. beaten have been shared via WhatsApp, Responding to the shutdown, the an activity that has been compared to non-governmental organization (NGO) lynchings. In response, WhatsApp has Article 19 found that Myanmar failed limited the number of times a message to meet these basic requirements. can be forwarded, first to 20 and now Such measures arbitrarily restrict to 5, but with WhatsApp group sizes freedom of expression, while also of up to 256 people such content, making it harder to document and even forwarded only 5 times, could 21 still reach nearly 1,300 people.10 This transparent about what is removed or is a reminder that technology does not how this is done. One effort to broadly exist in a vacuum, and merely curbing improve social media in this regard, technology without addressing the the 2018 Santa Clara Principles on underlying contexts of oppression is Transparency and Accountability in unlikely to have a significant impact. Content Moderation, were put forward, Such curbs may sound appealing, but calling on companies to publish they raise fundamental the number of posts removed and concerns. WhatsApp communications accounts suspended, notify users are end-to-end encrypted and the of the reasons why their content is implementation of such a law would removed or accounts suspended, require removal of this protection, and to ensure effective means of setting a dangerous precedent. appeal. But addressing hate speech online is not as simple as just removing Encrypted and hateful content or flagging abusive communication is important to protect accounts. Grasping cultural, religious the right to privacy and freedom of or linguistic nuances requires linguistic expression online, but it is also crucial fluency, but the promise of fluency in for protecting vulnerable populations, local languages can also come with such as ethnic, religious or sexual local anti-minority biases. Different minorities, against arbitrary and unlawful platforms and have their interference or attacks. While India is own policies and inconsistencies. not the only government to challenge In the US, for example, Facebook’s encryption through legislation, private efforts to remove hate speech have companies are also rolling out also inadvertently censored minority capable of attacking user privacy. groups using the platform to call out In 2019, WhatsApp filed a lawsuit racism or create dialogue. In some against Israeli company NSO countries, laws intended to protect Group over a hack of 1,400 users, minorities from online hate speech from Indian to Rwandan have instead engendered censorship human rights defenders. It has also and risked violating other rights. been pointed out that Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp, and its plans Germany, in response to the role of hate to integrate Instagram and WhatsApp speech in the early normalization of with its own messaging service, have Nazi atrocities against , Roma and given rise to new digital security other minorities during the Second World concerns in addition to the potential War, has some of the harshest hate insecurities created by publicly shared speech laws. Since 2018, the Network hateful content on such platforms. Enforcement Act (NetzDG) requires social media companies like Facebook, While stricter content moderation Twitter and YouTube to remove ‘illegal standards might seem to be an obvious content’ within 24 hours or risk fines solution, this also poses challenges, of up to €50 million. In 2019, especially when companies are not also passed a law to penalize social

10 Kastrenakes, J., ‘WhatsApp limits message forwarding in fight against misinformation’,

The Verge, 21 January 2019. minority and indigenous rights to technology of Thematic Chapters: The threats online dissemination of hate speech Since 2018, the or disinformation with up to three years in prison. With over 90 distinct Network Enforcement ethnic groups, Ethiopia has a history Act (NetzDG) requires of marginalizing minority communities such as Oromo and Amhara, and in social media companies March 2020 the government shut down the internet in much of the Oromia to remove ‘illegal region, amid reports of human rights abuses against the armed Oromo content’ within 24 Liberation Front. Displacement of hours or risk fines Ethiopian indigenous peoples, largely in the Gambella and Lower Omo of up to €50 million. regions, is also common. Hate speech has admittedly fuelled inter-, but without robust oversight and due process, instead of protecting media platforms for not removing certain such marginalized communities, content, carrying the potential risk of up the new anti-hate speech law may to three years in prison for executives of have a chilling effect on freedom of companies who fail to do so. The United expression and inter-ethnic dialogue. Kingdom (UK) is discussing similar legislation to combat hate speech, is also considering harsh disinformation, cyberstalking and terrorist legislation that would allow authorities activity by creating a single regulator that to shut down the internet, limit social can also penalize social media platforms. media access, and make criticism of the Compare these laws to Section 320 government punishable with up to three of the US Communication Decency years’ , and even, in some Act, which holds that no social media cases, impose life imprisonment or the platform shall be held liable for content death penalty for hate speech. Nigeria provided by someone else, an important has a diverse population of some protection for free speech in that social 250 distinct ethno-linguistic groups. It media companies that may be held is a country that has long witnessed liable for speech on their platforms are numerous conflicts over varying likely to over-censor. While Germany and political and economic interests. For Australia have a generally functioning instance, tensions over land and water , some governments without between settled farmers and nomadic independent judiciaries are also turning herders in the Middle Belt have led to laws like NetzDG to inspire their own to over 10,000 people being killed regulations, including , Belarus, in the last decade alone. Ogoni and Singapore, and the Philippines. other minorities in the southern Niger Delta region have particularly faced In February 2020, Ethiopia, recently persecution in connection with oil and transitioning out of authoritarian rule gas extraction. If new laws intended to and a past of wielding the law to detain crack down on inter-ethnic violence or and silence dissent, passed a law hate speech are not properly monitored, against hate speech that will punish they may silence documentation and SURVEILLANCE AND DIGITAL FREEDOMS 23 Ethiopia: recently passed a law against hate speech that will punish online dissemination of hate speech or disinformation with up to three years in prison. Nigeria: is considering harsh legislation that would allow authorities to shut down the internet, limit social media access, and make criticism of the government punishable with up to three years’ imprisonment. Brazil: in forming its council to counter fake news included the military and domestic intelligence services, both of which have a record of harassing, silencing and crushing minority and indigenous communities.

dissemination of such rights abuses silencing and crushing minority and without addressing the root causes indigenous communities. Under such of intolerance and discrimination. legislation, for example, indigenous rights defenders documenting land- Elsewhere, laws developed in the grabbing could be criminalized if name of combating ‘fake news’ and their campaigns become labelled online disinformation have been as fake news. Recognizing such proposed or enacted in multiple global concerns, the Organization of countries, with alarming ramifications States (OAS), the African for human rights. When Brazil Commission on Human and Peoples’ formed its council to counter fake Rights, the Organization for Security news, it included the military and and Co-operation in Europe and domestic intelligence services, both others put forward in 2017 the ‘Joint of which have a record of harassing, Declaration on Freedom of Expression

Victor holds up a leaf coated in oil as he stands in an oil polluted fishpond in Ogoniland, Niger Delta.

George Osodi minority and indigenous rights to technology of Thematic Chapters: The threats and “Fake News,” Disinformation EU-based internet into its own separate and Propaganda’ as a guideline for legal sphere. Signs point to a three-tiered a rights-based approach to managing internet in the future — the US, China potentially harmful content. and Europe — with potentially vastly different risks and protection regimes Moving beyond individual social for minority rights in the digital age. media platforms, there are growing concerns around what has been Surveillance termed cyberbalkanization or internet and digital freedoms balkanization. This notion relates to some of the localized cyber laws noted above ‘Surveillance tools can but goes well beyond in its theorization interfere with human rights, of internet ecosystems. In September from the right to privacy 2018, former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt put forward the idea, during and freedom of expression a meeting with a firm, that to rights of association and in the next 10 to 15 years the internet assembly, religious belief, would be split between China and non-discrimination, and the US. China, after all, has perfected public participation.’ centralized internet control under the Great Firewall and an ever increasing UN Special Rapporteur on the freedom armada of artificial intelligence (AI)- of expression David Kaye, 201911 supported censorship applications so that banned topics, such as discussion of In 2013, the UN General Assembly the persecution of Uyghurs and Tibetans, adopted a resolution on the right is not only criminalized but wiped from to privacy in the digital age, which the Chinese internet and social media expressed deep concerns over the platforms. In China, the internet is not a negative impact that surveillance and reflection of reality but of the propaganda the mass collection of personal data of the ruling Communist Party, and all the can have on human rights. Nowhere is characterization or masking of minority this more pronounced than in China. persecution that comes with it. China calls it a ‘sovereign internet’, but such ideas China has perfected sophisticated mean the proliferation of human rights surveillance systems designed to abuses online. It is little wonder that other profile ethnic and religious minorities, authoritarian states are following suit, and namely Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and in 2019 Russia adopted its own ‘Sovereign Hui Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Internet Law’ based on the China model. Autonomous Region. This surveillance Meanwhile, as Iranian-Canadian media is part of the mass extra-judicial scholar Hossein Derakhshan points internment, disappearance, torture out, the European Union (EU)’s General and forced labour in Xinjiang that has Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and led to widespread calls for a UN- related laws on hate speech, privacy led investigation. One of the main and copyright are essentially turning the systems by which China enforces

11 OHCHR, ‘UN expert calls for immediate moratorium on the sale, transfer and use of surveillance tools’, 25 June 2019. 25 the widespread surveillance of some some 63 countries, 36 of which are 13 million regional Turkic Muslims members of China’s Belt and Road is the Integrated Joint Operations Initiative. The fact that these products are Platform (IJOP), which Human Rights often marketed with the help of loans Watch (HRW) revealed in 2019 is from the Chinese government, including used by authorities to collect and to countries which might otherwise not centralize massive amounts of have the resources to purchase them, personal information, from hair colour raises ‘troubling questions about the and height to private religious and extent to which the Chinese government cultural beliefs and whether family is subsidizing the purchase of advanced members have studied abroad. repressive technology’.13 In light of the human rights violations perpetrated with Such platforms utilize AI to identify Chinese surveillance technology, it is people through facial or voice furthermore concerning that companies recognition, and other machine- such as ZTE, Dahua and others are learning algorithms based on the communicating with the UN International mass forced collection of biometric Telecommunication Union (ITU) to data, such as DNA, fingerprints, shape new international standards iris scans and blood samples. on facial recognition surveillance. When combined with ubiquitous checkpoints, IJOP also functions as Governments with abysmal human a virtual fence, restricting freedom rights records are not the only ones of movement in the real world. employing or abusing surveillance No longer confined to Xinjiang, technologies against ethnic and the police in China have expanded religious minority citizens. In the UK, on these technologies to target following the 2011 London riots, the Uyghurs living across the country. Metropolitan Police launched the According to a report by the New Gangs Matrix program. A system York Times, in April 2019 alone utilizing AI and machine learning to police in one central Chinese city compile a database of gang members, ran facial recognition surveillance it has been criticized by Amnesty UK to determine if residents were as ‘a racially discriminatory system Uyghurs some 500,000 times. Such that stigmatises young black men technology is on the rise in China.12 for the music they listen to or their behaviour on social media’. According But China is also a world-leading source to a 2019 Freedom of Information for AI surveillance to other countries. Request obtained by WIRED, some As recently reported by the Carnegie 80 per cent are listed as ‘African- Endowment for International Peace, ’, with a further 12 per cent Chinese technology firms such as from other ethnic minority groups, Huawei, Hikvision, Dahua and ZTE while only the remaining 8 per cent are supply AI surveillance technologies to listed as ‘white European’. Some are

12 Mozur, P., ‘One month, 500,000 face scans: how China is using AI to profile a minority’, New York Times, 14 April 2019. 13 Feldstein, S., The Global Expansion of AI Surveillance, Washington, DC, Carnegie Endowment

for International Peace, September 2019. minority and indigenous rights to technology of Thematic Chapters: The threats as young as 12.14 Since its inception, These examples demonstrate that both the database has listed around 7,000 open and repressive governments are people, and once someone is on the engaged in surveillance practices that Matrix, finding out why or getting their raise human rights concerns. As such, name removed can be extremely in responding to Privacy International difficult. But, in a victory for privacy and v. the United Kingdom, a current anti-discrimination advocates, several case of government surveillance hundred names were removed from before the European Court of Human the Matrix in early 2020, correcting Rights, Article 19 and the Electronic for ethnic bias and violations of data Frontiers Foundation (EFF) among protection laws. Similarly, for many others point out that government years following the 11 September surveillance, including hacking, has 2001 attacks, the New York City a ‘chilling effect’ on online expression, Police Department (NYPD) engaged contributing to self-censorship or in a Muslim Surveillance Program preventing them from organizing or that combined digital surveillance supporting protests. It has also been with informants and other types of shown to particularly impact vulnerable physical surveillance, giving rise to groups, members of which may be numerous human rights concerns fearful of reporting online abuse. over the discriminatory targeting and stigmatization of religious minorities. Border crossings have also become hotspots for automated surveillance. In Canada, police networks, the The EU has piloted an AI-driven facial Canadian Security Intelligence Service recognition lie-detector video surveillance (CSIS) and other government agencies border control system in , have subjected indigenous rights Greece and Latvia called iBorderCtrl. defenders to abusive surveillance Based on the contested theory of ‘affect and hacking, often by labelling them recognition science’, iBorderCtrl replaces ‘multi-issue extremists’. This charge human border guards with a video is largely in response to indigenous system that scans for facial anomalies protests against oil and gas pipelines, while targets answer a series of hydroelectric dams, mining operations questions. But the use of this technology and other extractive industries due at international borders, especially to environmental concerns and common crossing points for asylum encroachment on indigenous land. In seekers or migrant populations, raises some cases, CSIS has worked directly concerns over the potential for bias in with energy companies to conduct facial recognition systems, especially surveillance of indigenous peoples. In with regard to the analysis of women others, police surveillance has been of colour, cultural-communicative clearly excessive, such as a 16-month differences, or the inability to distinguish undercover operation in Saskatchewan the lingering impact of trauma. Province to catch an indigenous man accused of illegally selling 90 The US has also experimented with Canadian dollars’ worth of fish. ‘smart border’ technologies along

14 Yeung, P., ‘The grim reality of life under Gangs Matrix, London’s controversial predictive policing tool’, WIRED, 2 April 2019. 27 the US— border, relying on and human rights before the HRC. automated drones and other surveillance He recommended that states technologies. Such surveillance systems impose an immediate moratorium on infringe the of travellers, surveillance tools until proper human immigrants and people living along the rights safeguards are in place and called border. They also pose other risks: in a for an expansion of the Wassenaar 2019 study, researchers in Arizona used Arrangement on Export Controls for geospatial and statistical modelling to Conventional Arms and Dual-Use show that smart border technologies, Goods and Technologies to include instead of preventing undocumented spyware used to undermine human border crossing, merely shifted migration rights. For private companies, the report routes to potentially more hazardous recommends that companies should terrain, raising the number of migrant publicly affirm their responsibilities under deaths in the process. Leading rights the UN Guiding Principles on Business groups including EFF and the American and Human Rights to respect ‘freedom Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have of expression, privacy and related opposed such measures on the grounds human rights, and integrate human they would exacerbate racial and ethnic rights due diligence processes from the inequality in policing and immigration earliest stages of product development enforcement, as well as curbing freedom and throughout their operations’.15 of expression and the right to privacy. In their responses to the tragedy of In 2019, the UN Special Rapporteur Covid-19 throughout early 2020, many on freedom of expression, David Kaye, governments have seized on digital presented a report on surveillance surveillance technologies as part of

15 HRC, Surveillance and Human Rights: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, A/HRC/41/35, 28 May 2019.

Migrants try to enter Hungary through the border crossing in Horgos, . The EU has piloted surveillance technology involving a video system that would replace human

border guards. minority and indigenous rights to technology of Thematic Chapters: The threats their efforts to contain its spread. While AI and discriminatory bias technology can and should play a role in resolving global challenges like the People can be biased, but machines virus, without effective protections and are objective — or so many people the right to remedy its use also risks seem to believe. As machine-learning serious rights violations — especially capabilities improve with more for communities which are already elegant algorithms and big data, discriminated against and marginalized. the conventional thinking is that the One such tool has been contact biases or inefficiencies of human-led tracing and other mobile app-based processes will vanish. But machines tools designed to monitor infected or are trained by humans and this means potentially infected populations, as in that, just as children may learn the many contexts these applications have ethnic, religious or gender-based been developed without taking user biases of their parents or communities, privacy or other concerns into account. so too can machines develop India is one such example: as Indian biases based on their algorithms activist and writer Arundhati Roy has and datasets. Existing inequalities quipped, ‘The coronavirus is a gift to can be recreated in data, and big authoritarian states including India.’ data can magnify such inequalities. Indeed, across South Asia governments This is known as algorithmic bias. have been accessing personal data Organizations like the US-based on mobile devices without consent. All Algorithmic Justice League have set of these measures can have wide and out to raise awareness of these issues long-lasting impacts on the right to and to mitigate its harms and biases. privacy, impacting in turn on freedom Confronting this bias is complicated of movement, association and religion, when the algorithms are held in secret especially for minorities. Responding by private firms. Another challenge to such concerns, in early May 2020 is that even when an algorithm has Haroon Baloch of Bytes for All in been corrected for bias against one Pakistan petitioned the Islamabad High group, this does not necessarily mean Court to disallow such measures. At the it has corrected for others, especially time of writing, the case is still pending. when discrimination and bias is intersectional. In many cases, from In addition to concerns around education and employment to policing surveillance targeting minority and criminal sentencing, big data is communities, there have also been increasingly influencing our experience reports of Chinese, other Asian, Roma, in the world. This raises myriad Hispanic and other minorities across concerns around algorithmic bias. the world facing hate speech online and physical intimidation due to these In 2014 Amazon began to design an groups being accorded blame for the AI system to automate parts of the job spread of the virus. To make matters recruitment process. The algorithm was worse, minorities and indigenous trained on a dataset based on all the peoples in many countries may resumés submitted over the previous already lack access to medical care decade, which also happened to due to structural discrimination. overwhelmingly come from white men. AI AND DISCRIMINATORY BIAS 29 China: According to a New York Times report, in April 2019 police in one central Chinese city ran facial recognition surveillance to determine if residents were Uyghurs some 500,000 times. UK: Following the 2011 London riots, the Metropolitan Police launched the Gangs Matrix program, a system utilizing AI and machine learning to compile a database of gang members. According to a 2019 Freedom of Information Request, some 80 per cent are listed as ‘African-Caribbean’. Canada: Police networks, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and other government agencies have subjected indigenous rights defenders to abusive surveillance and hacking, often by labelling them ‘multi-issue extremists’.

Amazon’s hiring machine taught itself on the data upon which these to favour this ‘baseline’ applicant. It is machine-driven processes are trained, easy to see how, depending on the they can recreate bias. For example, data inputted, existing inequalities can a 2019 study conducted by the be replicated in supposedly objective technology non-profit Upturn with machine learning. For example, if Northeastern in Boston and the data draws from majority affluent others found that targeted ads on white male applications, it may score Facebook for grocery cashier positions the words ‘lacrosse’ or ‘crew’ higher were shown to audiences of 85 per and penalize resumés with words cent women, while taxi driver jobs such as ‘women’s,’ as in ‘women’s were shown to audiences that were chess club captain’. It may equally 75 per cent black. In a similar case, in undervalue extra-curricular activities 2019 the US Department of Housing perhaps more often mentioned among and Urban Development (HUD) applicants from less affluent and/ charged Facebook for violating the or minority backgrounds. Although Fair Housing Act after it came to light Amazon abandoned its project in that Facebook user data was being 2018, there are a number of automated used to influence targeted housing- resumé screening platforms in use related advertising that was unlawfully on the market today, and certainly discriminating ‘based on race, colour, not all of them have checked their national origin, religion, familial algorithms for bias. A 2018 survey by status, sex and disability’. Training LinkedIn revealed that 67 per cent of machine learning based on historical recruiters and hiring managers globally employment prejudices or economic rely on such tools to ‘save time’. and racial housing discrimination ensures their perpetuation. In other Another example comes from job words, although such technologies advertising, as prospective employers were dreamed up to be disruptive or turn to the algorithm-based targeting progressive, relying on supposedly of ‘ideal’ candidates. Again, depending unbiased algorithms to see past The threats of technology to minority and indigenous rights to technology of Thematic Chapters: The threats problematic in light of historic over- A 2019 study found that policing in minority communities. In this case, machine learning based on targeted ads on Facebook data from over-policed neighbourhoods feeds an algorithm that predicts the for grocery cashier positions need for more police presence, creating were shown to audiences a discriminatory feedback loop. A recent study of predictive policing across of 85 per cent women, and Wales by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) likewise while taxi driver jobs were uncovered this problem of replication and amplification of discrimination. In shown to audiences that many cases, such as with PredPol and were 75 per cent black. the police departments it partners with, the lack of meaningful transparency between private and public entities makes it increasingly difficult to audit discrimination in the recruitment algorithms for bias. process, they are just as likely to maintain or reaffirm an unequal Big data for predictive policing status quo. logically gives way to big data for predicting incarceration, with the same As seen with London’s Gangs Matrix, concerns of algorithmic bias based predictive policing measures cannot be on a criminal justice system rife with objective when the data they learn from institutional racism. In the US, pre-trial is based on ethnic or other structural risk assessments performed by AI and historical biases. As Andrea Nill are taking place in nearly every state Sanchez, executive director of the New to determine matters such as the York University-affiliated AI Now Institute, likelihood that the accused person will testified before the European Parliament re-offend (known as their ‘recidivism in February 2020, ‘left unchecked, the risk’) or whether they will appear at proliferation of predictive policing risks trial. Such AI-driven decisions can, replicating and amplifying patterns of among other things, impact the corrupt, illegal and unethical conduct chances or terms of bail, sentencing linked to legacies of discrimination and parole. One such tool, COMPAS that plague law enforcement by Northpointe, was profiled in a agencies across the globe’. 2016 investigation by ProPublica that showed that while the algorithm was One American company, PredPol, is correct over 60 per cent of the time, deployed across the country and offers it also exhibited racial bias when it location-specific predictive policing was wrong. Non-re-offending black solutions. Trained from years of recent defendants were twice as likely to be crime data, it is based on the idea that assigned higher recidivism rates than criminal activity at a certain place is white defendants, whereas roughly more likely to occur there again and 50 per cent of re-offending white concentrates police activity accordingly. defendants were assigned a lower However, this immediately becomes 31 number. In other words, when it was regardless of an individual’s criminal wrong the algorithm thought black history. This, in part, has contributed people were more likely, and white to the massive spike in immigration people less likely, to commit another detention and human rights abuses at crime. This has serious real-world the US border. This is a reminder that implications on who is imprisoned the parameters of machine-learning and for how long, perpetuating algorithms themselves can easily be extreme racial disparities in the prison adjusted for political and discriminatory system. Although Northpointe issued means against minority populations. a rebuttal to the ProPublica study in which the company ‘unequivocally Another challenge is how data is rejects the ProPublica conclusion collected and presented. Across of racial bias in the COMPAS risk Europe, anti-immigration populist scales’, there is still the underlying movements and governments cite challenge to independent auditing. hundreds of thousands of migrants entering the EU, or the million or With COMPAS, again, one of the more asylum applicants each year, obstacles to challenging learned to stoke anti-immigration fears that bias and ensuring all defendants’ lead to violence against minorities equal due process rights is that and the passage of restrictive laws or Northpointe’s algorithm is proprietary policies, such as iBorderCtrl. But in 2017 and not open to independent auditing. researchers in the UK noted the flaw And while judges are often presented in how such data is being generated with the COMPAS readouts during and broadcast. Frontex, the EU’s border hearings, this material is not always security agency, can count the same shared in full with the defendants person multiple times. For example, or their counsel, which provided the migrant or who arrived in the grounds for the ultimately the EU at Greece and left it to look for unsuccessful appeal in Loomis v. work in Albania, only to return through Wisconsin to the US Supreme Court Croatia or Hungary, may be counted as in 2017. The ACLU and over one two or more people entering the EU. hundred other organizations in the Similarly, the presentation of asylum US have called for an end to such data is a reflection of the total number pre-trial risk assessment tools. of applications across the EU and not the total number of individuals, These types of risk assessment and many asylum seekers may algorithm are not only being deployed register in multiple countries. In these for domestic criminal justice systems. examples, the data used to inform Since 2013 the US Immigration and machine-learning algorithms at borders Customs Enforcement (ICE) has relied or used in political campaigns or on such tools to make immigration legislation can be flawed, and in an detention decisions. Shockingly, environment of structural bias against following President Donald Trump’s minorities such misrepresentation nationalist stance on immigration, ICE of data can fuel disinformation, has since changed its algorithm to hate speech and violence. now always recommend detention, The threats of technology to minority and indigenous rights to technology of Thematic Chapters: The threats When big data is drawn from existing systems of ethnic, gender or other inequalities the bias is replicated: bias in, bias out.

The dangers of ‘big data’ rights activists point out, increasingly reaffirm inequalities between Israeli The challenges around surveillance citizens afforded privacy rights and due and discriminatory algorithms are process and West Bank underpinned by the increasing who have few such rights. Meanwhile in availability of ‘big data’ — not only Canada, Google’s sister firm Sidewalk from official records and coercive Labs has been developing Waterfront intrusions by governments, but also Toronto as a fully data-fuelled smart indirectly through the surreptitious neighbourhood, but concerns over collation of microdata on issues such its human rights impact sparked the as travel patterns, smartphone usage #BlockSidewalk movement. Canadian and the like. This is an area where author and digital rights activist Cory private corporations, rather than states Doctorow described it as a ‘terrible themselves, often play a leading role, idea to let vast, opaque multinational and are developing ‘products’ that may corporations privatize huge swathes of conceal agendas that have profound our city, webbing them with surveillance implications for human rights. sensors and subjecting them to One area where these challenges opaque, unaccountable algorithmic of big data are on full display is the analysis and interventions’.16 In May ‘smart city’, deemed smarter because 2020, Sidewalk Labs scrapped the it relies on an expanding network of project due to the economic uncertainty interconnected devices, sensors and in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. scanners to gather data on individuals While the context in Toronto may seem and their environment, to adjust very different to , there are or report according to the relevant still concerns around the implications protocol. This is part of the Internet of of surveillance and discrimination: Things, but for all its utopian ideals of as highlighted by one commentator, maximizing environmental after the cancellation of the project it can also produce a dystopian was announced, ‘minority groups surveillance nightmare, as in Xinjiang. and people of colour face more And as such, as the tech industry threats from surveillance than majority seeks to combine technology with groups, and a digital stop-and-frisk urban planning, its pursuit of innovation program could subject some people appears to outpace solutions for to more oversight than others’.17 privacy and other rights concerns. In India, a Smart Cities Mission , a leading technology hub and was launched in 2015 with plans world producer of surveillance tools, is to ‘modernize’ 100 cities by 2020, also increasingly turning to smart city but the lack of consideration for all design in Jerusalem that, as digital residents in the plans, especially for

16 #BlockSidewalk website. Available at https://www.blocksidewalk.ca/supporters 17 Lachman, R., ‘Sidewalk Labs’ city-of-the-future in Toronto was a stress test we needed’, Policy Options, 28 May 2020. 33

A man’s face glows as he goes through a biometric turnstile on his way to Jerusalem at Qalandiya checkpoint, . Eddie Gerald already marginalized Dalits, quality of life, as claimed in the and religious minorities, demonstrates Smart Cities Mission’s objectives.’18 that ‘smart’ does not necessarily mean ‘more equal.’ As India’s While South Korea’s Songdo Housing and Land Rights Network International Business District, (HLRN) noted in a 2018 report: a smart city built on reclaimed land from the Yellow Sea, may not avoid ‘With one in six urban Indians still some of the concerns noted above, living without adequate housing and South Korea does offer a useful access to essential services, and high framework for would-be smart city rates of violence and crime being developers. The country hosts the reported against women and children, annual World Human Rights Cities especially belonging to Dalits or other Forum, which adopted the Gwangju minorities, in urban areas, a “smart Guiding Principles for a Human city” cannot just be about installing Rights City in 2014. The Gwangju seamless digital connectivity, or making Principles reaffirm the need to respect physical infrastructure more efficient the principle of equality and equity and reliable.’ among all residents, implement non-discrimination measures In sensible advice for any would- including gender-sensitive policies be smart city planners around and protection for minorities and the world, HRLN cautions: ‘When vulnerable groups, with human marginalized individuals, groups and rights mainstreamed into all aspects communities are not at the centre of planning, implementation and of any scheme, it is unlikely that monitoring. In other words, as it will address their concerns and technologies and big data create new achieve inclusion and an improved tools, rather than merely embracing

18 Housing and Land Rights Network, India’s Smart Cities Mission: Smart for Whom?

Cities for Whom? (update 2018), Housing and Land Rights Network, 2018. minority and indigenous rights to technology of Thematic Chapters: The threats of ethnic, gender or other inequalities A 2017 study by Brookings the bias is replicated: bias in, bias out. found the income penalty Big data is the driving force behind the growth of AI, and because it is for minority STEM PhDs increasingly affecting everyone’s lives, taking on university says Adrian Weller of the UK’s Alan Turing Institute, ‘it is very important that employment in the we have a diverse set of stakeholders designing and building them’.20 US tends to be US$13,000 Unfortunately, as noted in a 2019 more a year than for non- study by the AI Now Institute, ‘there is a diversity crisis in the AI sector minority STEM PhDs. across gender and race’, with no public data even available for trans or other gender minorities.21 This lack of diversity is common across the whole digitization to make cities smarter we science, technology, engineering and should be embracing these tools to mathematics (STEM) field in general, make them Human Rights Cities. but even more so at where Online, big data and algorithmic bias the lack of diversity in STEM faculties is also a problem. In 2015, it was can arguably be said to impact minority revealed that the Google Photos students choosing the field as a career algorithm had labelled two black path. A 2017 study by Brookings found friends as gorillas. The company was one startling revelation: the income quick to apologize, but the root of the penalty for minority STEM PhDs taking problem remains across multiple tools on university employment in the US where intersectional bias is even more (rather than entering the private sector) pronounced and many online facial tends to be US$13,000 more a year recognition algorithms are far more than for non-minority STEM PhDs.22 likely to falsely identify or match black But this is only part of the issue. women. The reason, it has been argued, As presented above, bias can be is that ‘the values of the web reflect its intersectional and certainly one way builders — mostly white, Western men of addressing the replication of this — and do not represent minorities and bias is to ensure more intersectional women’.19 This has a similar cause to diversity in the big data workforce. the example of automated recruitment algorithms noted above, when big In China, the situation is worse. data is drawn from existing systems Uyghurs are largely prohibited from

19 Snow, J., ‘Bias already exists in search engine results, and it’s only going to get worse’, MIT Technology Review, 26 February 2018. 20 Ram, A., ‘AI risks replicating tech’s ethnic minority bias across business’, , 31 May 2018. 21 West, S.M., Whittaker, M. and Crawford, K., Discriminating Systems: Gender, Race and Power in AI, AI Now Institute, 2019, p. 3. 22 Startz, D., ‘Why is minority representation lagging among STEM faculty? It could be the money’, Brookings, 15 December 2017. We must protect against technology development creating new dependencies and inequalities, 35 not only in terms of the ‘digital divide’ — put simply, the separation between the haves and have-nots of certain technologies — but also the more nuanced issue of ‘digital colonialism’.

even enrolment in STEM programs. the workforce, legislation is needed This discrimination is part of China’s to address algorithmic bias. In early overall essentializing of ethnic and 2019, the US state of Washington, religious minorities, whereby their career home to companies like Amazon and and cultural place is relegated often to Microsoft, introduced an algorithmic merely one of entertainment and food. accountability bill that would establish While China proclaims its interest in guidelines for the procurement and use becoming a world leader in advanced of automated decision-making systems. technologies, the denial of STEM The lawmakers recognized the risks to education opportunities for Uyghurs ‘due process, fairness, accountability guarantees their marginalization from and transparency, as well as other civil any residual economic benefits that rights and liberties’. A major provision might be associated with even relatively of the bill would ensure that such tools innocuous technologies. Instead, employed by the public sector, such Uyghurs have in fact been the principal as pre-trial risk assessment programs surveillance target of many of these in the criminal justice system, would technologies. For these reasons, Uyghur be available before, during and after students who wish to pursue academic deployment for third-party auditing studies in engineering or aerospace, and research. Following such state-led for example, must seek opportunities legislative agendas, the US Congress abroad, such as in , but this also has introduced the federal-level introduces a vicious cycle of repression: Algorithmic Accountability Act, which, having a family member studying if adopted, would task the Federal abroad has become reason enough to Trade Commission with the creation interrogate or detain Uyghurs in China. of rules for evaluating algorithms for bias or discrimination, including the Another problem is that as the industry datasets used to train machine learning. expands to create new well-paying jobs, this lack of diversity reaffirms historical Meanwhile, across Europe, many economic inequalities of employment courts are finding that the human sectors that already reinforce gender rights impacts of unchecked big data stereotypes and whose workers are outweigh any potential benefits to predominantly drawn from minority the government. In February 2020, communities. It becomes a vicious for example, a Dutch court in NJCM cycle, bad data feeding algorithms v the Netherlands shut down the that shape real-world experiences, country’s System Risk Indication (SyRI) generating new bad data, and so system, which had relied on big data to on. In addition to greater diversity in predict benefit fraud. Many of its targets The threats of technology to minority and indigenous rights to technology of Thematic Chapters: The threats had been ethnic and religious minority and rights defence for many. But if Dutch citizens who are more often these new tools and technologies among the poor and vulnerable groups are to be developed or repurposed of society targeted by such automated for these objectives, then minorities welfare systems. In 2019, Swedish and indigenous peoples must be and French data protection authorities informed and involved at every step, fined and halted programs involving from design to implementation and facial recognition systems to gather evaluation. We must protect against and process biometric data about technology development creating student attendance. Such victories new dependencies and inequalities, for the right to privacy in Europe not only in terms of the ‘digital are made possible by the General divide’ — put simply, the separation Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), between the haves and have-nots which covers, among other things, an of certain technologies — but also individual’s right to receive information the more nuanced issue of ‘digital about the kind of data collected colonialism’. The latter raises a range about them and how it will be used. of concerns — bound up in the While the GDPR is still in its infancy, technologies themselves, not simply along with the European Parliament’s their lack of availability — around work in formulating a framework for power inequities, discrimination and algorithmic accountability,23 Europe the marginalization of non-majority is leading the charge in addressing voices. For instance, it is not enough many of the concerns of big data to provide universal access to the examined in this chapter and setting internet; it is also necessary to ensure standards that can hopefully provide that the online world is safe, accessible models for protecting vulnerable and non-discriminatory for minorities, minority populations elsewhere. indigenous peoples and other groups.

Reversing the trend: how An example of how this can be technologies can be used achieved is the development, since to defend human rights 2016 of a mobile application called #thismymob, by researchers at the This chapter has profiled a number of faculty of Engineering and Information concerning trends at the intersection Technology at the University of of technology and human rights, with Technology Sydney. The project, particularly troubling implications for explains its director Christopher minorities and indigenous peoples. Lawrence, was born from the concept These are serious issues that require of ‘postcolonial computing’, and considerable research, legislation uses participatory design to create and tools to combat and remedy new digital technologies with and them. At the same time, many of for indigenous peoples. Participatory these technologies are offering design, explains Lawrence, ‘ensures new connectivity, platforms and that the technology we design is resources to improve livelihoods culturally appropriate, and usable in

23 European Parliament Research Service, A Governance Framework for Algorithmic Accountability and Transparency, European Parliament, 2019. VICTORIES FOR THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY IN EUROPE 37 Victories for the right to privacy in Europe made possible by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): • In February 2020, in NJCM v the Netherlands, a Dutch court shut down the country’s System Risk Indication (SyRI) system, which had relied on big data to predict benefit fraud. Many of its targets had been ethnic and religious minority Dutch citizens who are more likely to be among the poor and vulnerable groups of society targeted by such automated welfare systems. • In 2019, Swedish and French data protection authorities halted and fined programs involving facial recognition systems to gather and process biometric data about student attendance. a wide variety of communities and elsewhere. Much of the lab’s research contexts…. We recognize that having is based on open source material, indigenous leadership on research and and the lab is also working to develop development projects is fundamentally an international protocol on open important.’ The platform, which was source investigations. Its methods developed taking intersectional can be employed by anyone, and by identities of region or gender into demystifying and disseminating such account, allows indigenous users skills beyond the university setting to connect with elders around the it creates a toolkit for minority and country for guidance and support — indigenous activists to increasingly for example, encouraging indigenous employ technology themselves in students to pursue careers in STEM their rights defence. Human rights or facilitating artists to promote organizations like WITNESS have their work to both indigenous and also developed new tools and non-indigenous communities.24 training for rights defenders to better document and disseminate human The Human Rights Investigations Lab rights concerns on social media. at the University of California Berkeley engages in multidisciplinary practicums Researchers are working on how to prepare students to mine social machine learning, too, could be media for documentation of human exploited for positive human rights rights violations. The lab has partnered outcomes — for example, by developing with leading international human rights algorithms to process large amounts organizations and media. For example, of social media or video content an explosive 2018 report by Reuters in order to flag hate speech or on hate speech in Myanmar was evidence of human rights abuses. based on efforts by the lab to collect Blockchain, perhaps better known as and translate over 1,000 social media the technology behind cryptocurrency posts involving hate speech against (which has also attracted criticism for Rohingya. They have also overseen its potential use in illicit transactions), investigations into Sudan, Syria and allows for the establishment of

24 Lawrence, C., ‘“Digital land rights”: co-designing technologies with ’,

The Conversation, 31 July 2018. minority and indigenous rights to technology of Thematic Chapters: The threats A Rohingya anonymized, secure and decentralized before submission and increase the woman living in networks, and also has human effectiveness of human rights litigation. a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, rights applications. For example, . video evidence or other social media Another example of the innovative Credit: Ramazan content that reveals human rights use and increasing ease of access Nacar abuses against minority or indigenous to technologies once reserved populations could be verified and for governments and militaries is entered into dedicated blockchain the benefit of satellite imagery in networks, creating decentralized, open documenting the scale of mass source, tamper-proof pools of big data, internment in Xinjiang. Throughout potentially useful for anything from 2018 in particular, Shawn Zhang, advocacy to international litigation. a graduate student at the University of British Columbia law , relied AI is also being developed for human on open source satellite imagery rights applications. In 2016, AI research to document multiple large-scale at the University of Sheffield in the UK internment camps across Xinjiang at and University of Pennsylvania in the a time when the Chinese government US trained an algorithm on trial data was still categorically denying their from the European Court of Human existence. The research of scholars like Rights to predict judicial decisions Zhang or human rights organizations with 79 per cent accuracy. Rather than such as Fortify Rights and HRW, falling victim to some of the concerns which have also used satellite of machine learning noted above, images in documenting the forced such algorithms at regional or national displacement of Rohingya in Myanmar, courts could be used to help human demonstrates how technology can rights lawyers better prepare their cases provide unequivocal evidence of 39 gross violations against minority Conclusion or indigenous populations even in areas where the majority government What these examples demonstrate refuses independent access and is that, while some technologies may fact-finding. Such data is valuable raise particular concerns, first and for human rights documentation foremost it is the governance and as well as later accountability and protections around them that are likely transitional justice mechanisms. to impact most directly on minorities and indigenous peoples, for better Meanwhile, digital security remains or worse. This is illustrated by the at the frontline of risk and protection challenges around monitoring negative for minority and indigenous rights content about minorities and indigenous defenders and their allies. And here, peoples online. While the dangers of again, the risk analysis and design of hate speech and misinformation are new tools must be conducted with very real, contributing to the continued the full consent and participation of exclusion of many communities minority and indigenous stakeholders. and even to physical violence End-to-end encryption, for example, against them, restricting freedom of should be a fundamental right because expression and undermining privacy in a digital age it is one of the bulwarks rights in the name of preventing hate against infringement of the freedom speech — a tactic employed by many of expression, association, assembly, authoritarian governments to justify and the right to privacy, not to mention internet shutdowns and other draconian real-world ramifications. Meanwhile, policies — is no solution. Indeed, even the best encryption or strongest more often than not, such measures passphrase is ultimately meaningless serve only to further silence and if a computer or mobile device is disenfranchise the groups most at risk. compromised, as seen above with the NSO Group hacking of WhatsApp. Since many of the technologies Additionally, police and state agents discussed in this chapter are new and in many regimes seldom hesitate to constantly evolving, further research, use physical force such as torture or documentation and the formulation of threatening one’s family members dedicated guidelines to ensure minority to extract information including and indigenous rights within their design passphrases. Digital security without and implementation will be of long- physical or psychological security is term benefit. It should not be assumed, not enough, and this has given rise to fatalistically, that protection regimes the concept of holistic security. This is will never be capable of catching up one area of digital rights and security, with technological developments. In among many, that is still at risk and fact, international human rights law remains crucial to the protection of is already highly capable of guiding minority rights. Groups such as the these technologies and protecting Guardian Project, EFF, Tactical Tech minorities and indigenous peoples Collective and others continue to in the digital age. If even existing work with frontline rights defenders to human rights law were better applied, develop new tools and holistic security we might find the need for new rules routines, adapting to the digital age. and guidelines were largely redundant. The threats of technology to minority and indigenous rights to technology of Thematic Chapters: The threats Though many governments have • Uphold freedom of expression clearly been directly complicit in using and information as a ‘default setting’ technology to perpetrate human for the use of any technologies. rights abuses against minorities and International law is unequivocal indigenous peoples, an added issue that freedom of expression and here is that technological design, information can be restricted development and roll-out involves an only under the most extreme increasing array of non-governmental circumstances, and that any actors, including corporations and restrictions should be prescribed by research institutions. These independent law, pursue a legitimate aim, and organizations are often vested be necessary and proportionate. with considerable powers to guide However, many government efforts decision-making in areas such as law to regulate speech online have enforcement, migration management failed to meet these standards. and welfare provision — traditionally In particular, the increasing the preserve of governments — without use of internet shutdowns by many of the oversight, accountability authorities to quell dissent should or regulatory protocols that would be be seen not only as vehicles for applied to public bodies as a matter human rights violations, but as of course. What is needed, then, violations in and of themselves. is far better transparency at every stage, not only in the design and • Ensure that the highest standards implementation of these products, of corporate responsibility are but also in how companies make imposed on those working in areas their rules for oversight and decision- of technology with potential human making. This means, for example, that rights impacts. In particular, the use companies need to disclose when and of private-public partnerships for how they work with governments, as predictive policing or surveillance- well as what information they collect based security systems should and share. In addition, there must not enable governments to be means for effective challenge outsource their human rights or remedy for these decisions. responsibilities to opaque and unaccountable institutions. Private Technology alone, however well- companies working in sectors designed, will not address underlying with potential impacts on human societal injustices, and in many rights protections should be cases may in fact perpetuate or held to the highest standards on worsen inequalities for minority and issues such as transparency, due indigenous communities. Just as diligence and public regulation. human rights law should govern the design and implementation of • Streamline human rights new technologies, so too should it law more effectively into the govern broader social norms and the development, use and delivery increasing integration of technologies of new technologies. While the into our lives. Some basic principles evolving nature of some emerging to support this process include: technologies may require new 41

legislation and frameworks, it is political representation, public important to recognize that there spending and other rights, it is is a wealth of existing human rights important that the opportunities law that, if effectively implemented, offered by the latest ‘smart’ could support the realization data-collection tools are used of a more inclusive and socially in a rights-based framework beneficial future. For instance, in that respects privacy and non- the case of private actors, the UN discrimination. The potential Guiding Principles on Business and opportunities of AI and big data Human Rights call on businesses to increase visibility should not to prevent and mitigate the actual be undermined by excluding and potential human rights abuses individuals or communities from associated with their business particular benefits or services practices, and to conduct regular, through the use of discriminatory effective, independent human or biased algorithms. rights impact assessments of all their operations. This is increasingly • Establish clear principles of necessary for technology accountability for any decision- companies and internet providers. making assisted by AI, algorithms and other technologies to ensure • Impose clear guidelines on the that the rule of law is upheld. ethical, non-discriminatory use In particular, any negative decisions of personal data by companies, involving predictive policing, governments and other actors. parole and immigration that While the historic lack of lead to continued incarceration, disaggregated data for minorities visa rejections, deportation or and indigenous peoples has detention should be followed up been a major barrier to their by an appeals process overseen efforts to secure adequate by a human adjudicator. The threats of technology to minority and indigenous rights to technology of Thematic Chapters: The threats Empowering minorities and indigenous peoples through technology

Nicole Girard

Advances in technology are revolutionizing the ways in which communities and advocates work to realize indigenous and minority rights. Despite the many ways that technology is being used to reinforce and exacerbate inequality — through, for example, surveillance and discriminatory artificial intelligence — civil society is using the same tools to decentralize power and to destabilize established systems of oppression.

From monitoring human rights abuses that, with a rights-based approach, through satellite imagery to designing technologies can bring a wide range mobile applications which continue of benefits to communities — even in reproduction, sectors such as the digital gaming creative technological adaptations industry which, similarly to the film have upended long-standing industry, has been characterized hierarchies by mobilizing successful by discrimination in its storylines movements in order to bring human and character representations. rights violations out into the open. Online activism and This chapter outlines some of the ways social media campaigns that technologies are being used and adapted to support the realization of The use of the internet and social media greater rights for marginalized minorities platforms has been one of the defining and indigenous peoples. Drawing features of this new era, enabling on examples of online activism, contemporary activists to secure visibility citizen-led data initiatives and the for historically marginalized groups innovative ways in which traditional and to transform ordinary citizens into knowledge is combined with new journalists, rapporteurs and human applications and software, it shows rights advocates. Yet, at the same time, 43

Demonstrators gather in front of the White House during protests resulting from the police killing of George Floyd. Credit: Hosein Fatemi / Panos

social media is increasingly being met with equally creative and diligent used by states as a tool to spy on and responses from civil society. The to manipulate the work of activists example above, in fact, was specifically or even whole minority populations. intended to piggyback on the very real These tactics, at their most cynical, achievements of a genuine grassroots can see movements co-opted for use campaign, . If imitation in proxy wars between states. One is indeed the highest form of flattery, notorious case of this is the way in then the attempts by various repressive which the prominent ‘Blacktivist’ and states to confect online movements other seemingly progressive social in order to promote their own views media accounts have been traced must represent an awareness that back to Russian operatives, with the such grassroots networks represent suspected intention of inciting racial a potential threat to their power. discord in the United States (US) in For governments which have long the build-up to the 2016 elections. enjoyed an unchallenged monopoly on mainstream media and political While the desire to infiltrate and co-opt expression, these innovative platforms social movements is nothing new, have provided their dissenters and technologies are providing new arenas victims with an opportunity to reach large

for this struggle, and these have been audiences and publicize their views. technology Thematic Chapters: Empowering minorities and indigenous peoples through At the time, this was viewed Three days after as a remarkable sign of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag as a George Floyd’s murder, mobilizing force. Use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was has increased drastically since the brutal killing of George Floyd in police tweeted 8.8 million times custody on 25 May 2020, catalyzing in a single day. During millions of activists first in the US and then worldwide. According to the following two weeks, a further Pew Research Center study, the hashtag was tweeted three days after Floyd’s murder, #BlackLivesMatter was tweeted nearly 3.7 million times 8.8 million times in a single day. During a day on average. the following two weeks, the hashtag was tweeted on average nearly 3.7 million times a day. The impact is a powerful rejoinder to those who United States: Black Lives Matter have questioned the potential of online The Black Lives Matter movement, activism to deliver substantive change: one of the most powerful social the success of this awareness raising movements in the US since the civil on social media was instrumental rights era, has proven that social in driving public demonstrations media has an overwhelming power in cities across the world. to draw attention to issues that have been ongoing for decades — if not The question of power, control and centuries — but have generally been access to these technologies is also overlooked, ignored or deliberately crucial here. In the 1960s, the civil covered up. Through the widespread rights movement used the power of availability of smartphone cameras and television to bring violence against black pervasive social media use, citizens people in the homes of all Americans. have been able to film and broadcast However the power to set the police brutality and tell the stories still remained in the hands of the white that need to be heard themselves, media, in what they chose to cover and without any intermediaries. Armed how they chose to frame the discussion. with this evidence and propelled by Even the itself the acquittal in July 2013 of Trayvon rested in the hands of its (largely Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman, male) leaders and spokespersons the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag who then spoke on behalf of the became a rallying call and organizing people. Social media has enabled force against continued systemic that system to be turned on its head, and violent racism by the state, with a less hierarchical, decentralized particularly in law enforcement and the system of activists who can speak for justice system. According to the Pew themselves and inform a wider network. Research Center, by May 2018 the The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has #BlackLivesMatter hashtag had been created a platform for discussion, used almost 30 million times on Twitter, awareness-raising and collective action an average of 17,000 times a day. by a wide range of organizations that 45 brings the issues of racism back to the has resulted in more fluid decision- (white) mainstream, while putting the making structures, with affiliated spotlight on corrupt prosecutors, police activists able to define their priority brutality and the urgent need for criminal areas and join forces with other allies, justice reform.1 As Opal Tometi, one as in the support offered in 2016 of the original co-founders (together by Black Lives Matter members to with Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza) indigenous Standing Rock #NoDAPL of the Black Lives Matter movement, activists who were protesting the said, in a June 2020 New Yorker Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). profile: ‘There are chapters across the country, many of them are operational Of course, this is not to say that social and do their own fund-raising, and media platforms have been able make their demands…. So different to banish the hostility and racism chapters might take on different issues, which is evident in the offline world. but there is this throughline of valuing Far from it: the same platforms that black life and understanding that we have driven the inspiring activism of are not a monolith but being radically Black Lives Matter have also served inclusive in terms of chapter makeup.’ as vehicles for extremists and hate groups to threaten, vilify and abuse As the activist Ashley Yates further minorities, indigenous peoples and explained, the civil rights movement those who support their calls for justice. had previously defined by ‘the singular Activists can spend much of their time figure model of black liberation — which blocking or reporting threats and racist was often a man in a suit, at the top, slurs – a reminder that the struggle and having him be the microphone to ensure the internet is a safe and for people…. We didn’t realize it didn’t respectful place for all will never end. work until we saw what happened, and they repeatedly killed that leader. It took Papua, : Digital the wind out from under a movement.’2 forensic investigation reveals Social media has opened up space pro-government bot network for those who have been historically Having witnessed the successes marginalized within the civil rights brought about by social media movement, such as women and movements, various governments, LGBTQ+ people. #SayHerName is corporations and other actors have then one such example. It was created by been caught manipulating these trends the African American Policy Forum in for their own ends. While the ‘Blacktivist’ 2015 to campaign alongside the Black case mentioned earlier involved Lives Matter movement with a focus a foreign government attempting on a gender-inclusive approach to to exploit social divisions in the US, racial justice and to draw attention to the Indonesian government has been black cis- and transgendered women’s accused of running a deceptive online experience of state violence. This campaign to manipulate international diffusion of power and representation support for the Free Papua movement,

1 Roberts, F.L., ‘How Black Lives Matter changed the way Americans fight for freedom’, ACLU, 13 July 2018. 2 Parker, E. and McIlwain, C., ‘#BlackLivesMatter and the power and limits of social media’,

Medium, 2 December 2016. technology Thematic Chapters: Empowering minorities and indigenous peoples through The violent protests and the heavy military response were accompanied by a strategic, well-funded social media campaign that spread pro-government propaganda, according to a joint report by researchers at the BBC and Bellingcat, an organization that has pioneered digital forensic investigations. Given the internet shutdown and a ban on foreign journalists travelling to Papua, it is difficult to report on events in the region. Some of those who released videos from the protests, such as Indonesian human rights lawyer Veronica Koma, were targeted by online disinformation and hate campaigns. Nevertheless, investigators noticed that pro- hashtags such as #FreeWestPapua, #WestPapuaGenocide, #WestPapua and #fwpc were being ‘hijacked’ by pro-government posts: these typically reported on generous financial assistance to the Papuan provinces, a lack of support for Papuan — a decades-old independence independence among West Papuans, students movement that regards the Indonesian and the inaccuracies or malicious protesting racism, government as colonial aggressors. misrepresentations of foreign media calling for coverage on the situation in the region. independence From August 2019, massive protests for their territories began to spread across the Indonesian The team traced the digital footprint, and an end provinces of Papua and West Papua focusing first on suspicious Twitter to an internet in response to the arrest of 43 ethnic accounts. Following two specific shutdown in Papua. Papuan university students in East Twitter hashtags, #WestPapua and Albert Ivan Java for allegedly ‘disrespecting’ the #FreeWestPapua, from 29 August Damanik Indonesian flag. The government to 2 September 2019, they built an deployed over 1,000 military personnel itemized dataset of the usernames that in the streets of Papua and ordered used these tags, retweeted or liked the an internet shutdown in the region. posts, the post time-stamps, URLs and While the protests were sparked type of activity (tweet, retweet, quote or over accusations of racism, the mention). Data was then imported into events triggered renewed calls for the open-source visualization platform Papuan independence, focusing on Gephi and transformed into a graphic grievances over an unimplemented visualization that revealed abnormal autonomy law, continuing Twitter activity suggestive of automated militarization and widespread poverty accounts, or ‘bots’. Three key markers in the resource-rich province. identified the accounts as bots: Google 47 reverse image searches revealed 34 Instagram accounts. Facebook that most of the profile photographs revealed that the account-holders were fake, originating from elsewhere had spent US$300,000 in their efforts on the internet; the accounts did not and traced them to Indonesian media interact and were used exclusively for firm InsightID. The investigation posting or spreading pro-government shows how social media is becoming content; and the patterns and timing an international battleground over of posting suggested automation competing relating to through synchronization. The Twitter minority and indigenous peoples’ accounts were linked to Facebook, rights, but that careful digital forensic Instagram and YouTube accounts examination of disinformation that disseminated the same content. tactics using open verification Under the Transparency tab on any methods can restrict these efforts. given Facebook page, information is provided regarding the page’s Xinjiang, China: Uyghur creation date, location and whether digital flash mob they are running paid Facebook While Indonesia maintains a relatively ads as well as the ads’ targeted free internet space, activists in other locations. Most of them were targeting parts of the world are showing how European audiences, and slandering online resistance can still continue the pro-independence movement. in even the worst-case scenarios, where human rights abuses are now After the team’s lead researcher being bolstered by the most advanced Benjamin Strick published some of his technologies. Xinjiang, also known findings on Medium and Bellingcat, as East Turkestan, is the Facebook announced it had found of the ethnic Uyghur Muslim minority evidence of ‘coordinated inauthentic that is currently enduring a massive behaviour’, subsequently closing 69 forced assimilation programme Facebook accounts, 42 Pages and by the Chinese state. Advanced

THREE KEY MARKERS IDENTIFIED THE ACCOUNTS AS BOTS:

Google reverse image searches revealed that 1. most of the profile photographs were fake, originating from elsewhere on the internet. The accounts did not interact and were 2. used exclusively for posting or spreading pro-government content. The patterns and timing of posting suggested 3. automation through synchronization. The Twitter accounts were linked to Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts that disseminated the same content. indigenous peoples through technology Thematic Chapters: Empowering minorities and indigenous peoples through surveillance techniques are the Hard against Violent Terrorism’ ethnic defining characteristic of the program, assimilation campaign, posting or with popular messaging applications sharing any content relating to Uyghur like WeChat being used to spy on or Muslim culture could put one at risk any Uyghur accused of ‘undermining of being sent for ‘re-education’ in one the Chinese state’ or participating in of the de facto internment camps that ‘radicalized Islam’ — vague, catch-all are now estimated to hold 1 million terms which are used to justify arbitrary Turkic Muslims (mostly Uyghurs but monitoring and forced disappearances. including other ethnic Turkic groups).

WeChat became extremely popular In early 2017, it was still possible for among Uyghurs after the government the Uyghur community to installed 3G networks in the region communicate with their families via in 2011, offering them a virtual space WeChat, but this was an extremely to develop their arts, music, culture high risk for those still in Xinjiang, who and religious expression unmolested were hesitant to discuss anything about as the wider online world became their situation or the widespread forced increasingly policed by the Chinese disappearances being carried out by government. It is estimated that by the Chinese authorities. As a result, families end of 2013, around 1 million Uyghurs began to communicate via code. were using the app. At that time, the use For example, if someone was jailed, of Arabic script made it more difficult they would say ‘admitted to hospital’. for Chinese censors to monitor, and Eventually coded emojis began to be much of the communication was done used: a wilted rose meant that someone as audio clips or script embedded had been arrested, a dark moon meant over images in memes. After the they had been sent to the camps, a state began implementing its ‘Strike sun that they were still alive, a flower that they had been released. Eventually, though, by the end of 2017, those in the diaspora were being deleted from their families’ WeChat accounts as In early 2017, people began to go incommunicado. communicating to the Xinjiang is now one of the most tightly controlled information environments in diaspora community the world. There are severe restrictions on journalists and region-wide blocks via WeChat was high on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. risk for Uyghurs in One of the few remaining social media apps in Xingjiang is Douyin, the Xingiang. Families domestic Chinese version of Tiktok. Tiktok has been downloaded 15 billion began using coded times worldwide and is mostly popular emojis: a sun meant among youth as a place where they can post short videos set to music. they were still alive. Those inside China must access it through its firewalled version, Douyin. 49

It is one of the few social media The videos are the only sign of Screenshots of apps available in Xinjiang and can coordinated non-violent resistance videos on TikTok showing videos only be accessed outside of China to come out of Xinjiang in years, and of Uyghurs with a Chinese mobile phone. have spread to the outside world silently posing despite a firewall that is effectively with photos of detained At the end of July 2019, a senior Chinese working to keep the world out of China relatives. official announced that 90 per cent (as well as to keep those in China in). Foreign Policy of detainees had been released from Uyghur activists outside China such as the detention camps and ‘returned to Arslan Hidayat, who monitors Douyin society’. Diaspora Uyghurs were incensed for evidence of forced assimilation, and baffled, as still no news of their have reposted dozens of videos for relatives and friends had yet surfaced. the world to see via Facebook and A couple of weeks later, a series of eerie Twitter with the hashtag #WeHearU. videos began to be posted on Douyin, The ambiguity and high volume of the in what seemed to be a digital flash videos seems to have enabled them mob silent protest over the government’s to bypass state content monitors. claims. Each video is only a few seconds Within days of being posted, though, long, showing the subject standing the accounts had been shut down silently or softly crying and superimposed or videos deleted. Another Uyghur over pictures of loved ones, all set to a activist commented, ‘These people are mournful sounding song called ‘Dönmek’, incredibly brave because they know which means ‘return’ in Turkish. Nothing the risks they are taking. I’m afraid in the video is explicit, but it is assumed that the people in these videos might that the pictures in the background are be arrested, especially with the facial of their missing loved ones. One woman recognition technology that China is holds up four fingers, as if to express already using to monitor the Uyghur the four men in her life pictured in the population.’ Despite massive internet background, and slowly makes a fist. surveillance, information control, indigenous peoples through technology Thematic Chapters: Empowering minorities and indigenous peoples through Randomly Sampled Brick Kiln Locations and Sample Areas within the extended Brick Belt Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924271618300479

firewalls and threats to their personal easily be shared and freely accessed safety, people still find ways to by the rest of the world, and public circumvent oppressive technology for access to remotely sensed data. their own forms of creative protests. The legitimacy of evidence gathered Open-source investigation and verified through open-source to document human techniques is increasingly recognized by rights abuses governments and human rights bodies. In 2017, the International Criminal Court Open-source investigation is (ICC) issued its first ever indictment a methodology that has been for war crimes based exclusively on revolutionized by the vast amounts evidence gathered through social media of publicly available digital data such (relating to mass executions around as posts on social media platforms Benghazi, Libya). These and other and geospatial satellite imagery. increasingly specialized techniques Its techniques can be particularly are being utilized by a variety of civil effective in areas of the world that society organizations to investigate and are inaccessible due to war or publicize human rights abuses against tight restrictions on civil society minorities and indigenous peoples. by authoritarian governments and regimes. The rapid expansion in the South Asia: Identifying brick kilns use of open-source investigation using geospatial technology techniques has been credited to the The ‘brick belt’ is a vast area stretching increase in the use of smartphones across Pakistan, northern India, Nepal with 3G/4G connections with which and Bangladesh, with thousands of to record human rights violations, functioning brick-making factories, a concentration of social media employing between 10 million and platforms where information can 23 million workers. There are endemic 51 levels of debt bondage in Brick kilns can be identified using the brick factory system and most of satellite imagery due to their these bonded workers are from either distinctive shape and the spatial Dalit or other marginalized communities. organization of the surrounding area: The prevalence of these factories is oval or circular tracts, sometimes notoriously difficult to quantify, as they 150 meters long, often with a tall flourish beyond the reach of civil society chimney in the middle. The kilns may and law enforcement agencies. The be surrounded by clay fields where pioneering Slavery from Space initiative the raw material is gathered. The by the University of Nottingham initial stage of the project, conducted Rights Lab is the first attempt to in 2017, used crowdsourced human engage geospatial observation ‘visual searchers’ to manually make to assess the extent of slavery by these identifications in a 250 km2 developing, through a statistically select target area in Rajasthan, robust estimate of the number of India. Volunteers were gathered brick kilns, a proxy estimate of the through citizen science web platform number of slave labourers at these Zooniverse and received a large kilns. Their research was facilitated by influx via social networks promoted three key technological advances — through New Scientist magazine. publicly available fine spatial resolution Fifteen volunteers were required to A labourer satellite sensor data, crowdsourced view and tag each of the 396 image carries bricks citizen verification and advanced extracts, which, finally, were verified in a kiln in the ‘brick belt’ of machine learning applied to image by the lead researcher to comprise South Asia. classification — all of which would have the ‘ground truth’, the final calibration REUTERS/ been impossible just a decade ago. of the remotely sensed data. Ranita Roy indigenous peoples through technology Thematic Chapters: Empowering minorities and indigenous peoples through Machine learning algorithms, known to spatially organize the evidence as deep learning classifiers, were then through digital modelling, animation, trained using the human-identified video synching and mapping, as samples, which the team claims well as other more revolutionary could identify the brick kilns in a given evidence-gathering methods such as area to an overall accuracy of 95 smoke plume analysis. As FA director per cent. The methodology can then Eyal Weizman explained to WIRED be replicated and adapted for other magazine, ‘The concept of testimony contexts and is already informing the is being completely reformatted. work of local civil society organizations. Usually, human rights organizations The team has also made headway have to wait days, even months, in identifying slavery in shrimp and and collect things from memory. But fish processing plants in Bangladesh, these are testimonies of people who and plans to use satellite infra-red were there, technological testimonies capabilities to detect illegal mining through their cameras and videos.’ operations as the unearthed minerals produce different reflective qualities. Much of FA’s continuing work has Even then, the link between slavery focused on Palestine, a quintessential and the data produced by satellite example of how military technologies, needs to be verified on the ground. including advanced weaponry, ‘What we are driving toward,’ explained surveillance, drones and satellite Doreen Boyd, director of the data imagery, have been used heavily programme at the Rights Lab, ‘is against the civilian population as tools the fact that people who carry out of control. FA’s continuing work there slavery activities can’t hide. It’s a represents a disruptive attempt to methodology that you can’t hide from.’3 use similar technologies to counteract state oppression. In 2018, they teamed Palestine: Reconstructing human rights up with (NYT) abuses through ‘forensic’ data analysis to investigate the 1 June 2018 killing Forensic Architecture (FA) is a research of Palestinian medic Rouzan al-Najjar, agency based at Goldsmiths, University apparently shot by an Israeli sniper of London, which is pioneering the use bullet while providing assistance to of ‘counter-forensic’ investigative protesters. The 2018 protests in Gaza techniques to reconstruct the sites of against the continuing blockade human rights abuses. Using new and by Israel were the largest in recent emerging technologies, as well as history and resulted in the killing of analytical tools that until recently were hundreds of protesters and wounding only in the hands of states and their of thousands of others by Israeli intelligence apparatuses, FA pieces forces, using live ammunition. The together evidence from a variety of Israeli authorities, however, claimed sources, including crowdsourced that all shots fired were through the videos, social media posts and precise identification of a target that remote sensing data, and then using posed a direct and imminent threat. architectural modelling techniques

3 The Rights Track, ‘Modern slavery: a human rights based approach’, 17 July 2018. Podcast available at: http://rightstrack.org/modern-slavery-what-can-we-count-and-how 53

In order to assess the validity of these campaign to deflect responsibility claims, FA created a digital landscape for her killing, but later the Israeli of the site from drone footage Defence Force’s Military Advocate taken by the NYT team, and used General reportedly ordered the Military photogrammetry software to make Police Investigation Unit (MPIU) to a precise measurable 3D model from carry out a criminal investigation into over 1,000 photos and videos from the killing. Yet no recent update on the day of the protest. Using the sound the case has been released, and of the gunshot, the video clips were civil society activists have noted that synchronized, and through camera MPIU investigations often fail to hold tracking and Cinema4D software anyone accountable for such crimes. they were able to digitally plot the rotational movement of the various As state abuses against Palestinian cameras against a common horizon. civilians have been ongoing with Then, the team utilized a panoramic impunity for many decades and stabilization technique from still images received with very little in the and mapped the composite panorama way of official investigations, the into a 3D model using open-source irrefutable data provided by FA’s software Blender. This comprehensive analysis represents a unique step 3D model showed the general density towards ensuring accountability. FA of the crowd, the positioning of the has gained traction applying these eight medics present, and established and similar methodologies in other a likely ‘cone of fire,’ tracing the parts of the world, including an trajectory of the single bullet to a sand analysis of the impact of oil and gas berm on the other side of the border extraction on indigenous fence where three Israeli personnel communities in Argentina, uncovering were located. This model, along with proof of a historic genocide in 30 witnesses who were interviewed Quiché, and analysing for collaborating evidence, pointed to cases of police killings of African- a single bullet that ricocheted off some American men in Chicago, US. rocks, hitting one medic in the leg and another medic with its shrapnel, Traditional knowledge before continuing its trajectory to hit and smart technologies and kill Rouzan al-Najjar, in an act summarized by the NYT as ‘reckless Indigenous peoples have been at best, and possibly a war crime.’ evolving and embracing technology for millennia. The digital revolution FA’s findings directly contradicted is no different. There is a prevailing Israel’s claims that only protesters mainstream idea that tradition and who posed an immediate threat were technology are at odds with each targeted. FA’s model clearly showed other, a notion influenced in part by that there were eight medics among the preference of some indigenous the protesters, none of whom were communities for their communal posing an immediate threat and who knowledge, developed over were at a significant distance from centuries, instead of assimilationist the border fence. After Rouzan’s or environmentally destructive notions death, Israel engaged in a smear of ‘progress’. This perspective not indigenous peoples through technology Thematic Chapters: Empowering minorities and indigenous peoples through Canada: Helping hunters by bridging traditional knowledge with smartphones Indigenous Canadian communities, Indigenous peoples however, are overturning these assumptions and showing how represent only 2 per cent digital technologies can be utilized to continue their traditional ways of life of the game industry, and and to refine, store and share their knowledge systems. In the words of only 27.8 per cent are Inuit hunter Peter Kattuk, ‘It’s time for female, or the harpoon and the computer to work together.’ The Indigenous Knowledge another gender identity. Social Network (SIKU) smartphone application, launched in December 2019, is doing just that. Named after the Inuktitut word for sea ice, only overlooks the inequalities and the app was developed by abuses that have accompanied the civil society organization Eider introduction of certain technologies to Society with funding from the 2017 these populations, often as part of a Google.org Impact Challenge. The app broader programme of dispossession, primarily addresses Inuit communities’ but also the long history of indigenous need to be informed about sea ice technological innovations being conditions while hunting or travelling, co-opted by non-indigenous as well as documenting and sharing populations, including the , detailed traditional knowledge and kayak, toboggan and snowshoe, language between community quickly adapted by European members, in a way that can engage and used to colonize Canada. the younger generation yet also leverage the power of the crowd. In sum, indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups do The climate crisis has made not fundamentally have a fraught predictions of sea ice more relationship with technology. Rather, difficult for Inuit hunters. If they underlying power dynamics, including identify a dangerous type of sea those stemming from discrimination or ice, mainstream social media like poverty, create barriers to access that Facebook may be able to share that can disadvantage whole communities. information, but it is restricted to the Indeed, when technologies are hunter’s own network, does not allow available on their terms, not as tools of for GPS mapping of the location, repression but rather of empowerment and is soon lost in the barrage of and community, indigenous peoples the recipients’ newsfeeds. SIKU have demonstrated how they however allows for geotagging of can be combined with traditional locations with symbols to correlate knowledge to address a wide range of the data with indigenous knowledge challenges, including climate change. of sea ice. For example, one hunter 55 identified a type of sea ice that Addressing discrimination in looks like a normal tidal crack but digital games through ‘indigenous can break open if the wind is strong. self-determination’ After they had tagged the location, Digital games have been an arena in a couple of hours the satellite of contestation over fair access to imagery available in the app showed technology, and particularly over how that the ice had in fact broken a lack of participation in the design apart, making return to the other and marketing phase of games side of the ice impossible. Hunters has resulted in heavily racist and in the area using the app would gendered stereotypes that continue have been made aware before the to be perpetuated — especially with conditions posed a risk to their lives. regard to North American indigenous peoples. The digital gaming world is SIKU was created to maintain the stereotypically the domain of white feel of a social network, but with men, designed by and for a white specialized features for Inuit hunters. male audience. While of course It has four main types of posts: not exclusively true, the statistics ‘social’, ‘wildlife,’ ‘sea ice’ and ‘tools’. on the numbers of minorities or Place names can be tagged in indigenous people in the game multiple dialects and act as ‘living industry are illuminating. According wikis of indigenous knowledge’. to the International Game Developers Users can track wildlife sightings Association’s latest figures, people and other unusual circumstances who identify as ‘white, Caucasian that are identified by ’ intimate or European’ comprise 68 per cent knowledge of their lands and of global game industry employees, species habitats. ‘Tools’ brings data while other ethnicities remain collection a step further with the under-represented. In particular, ability to capture data with scientific indigenous peoples represent only instruments, such as water or ice 2 per cent of the industry. Only 27.8 core samples. This knowledge is per cent are female, transgender especially crucial for locally based or another gender identity. climate change monitoring, helping to inform the community of its Given this lack of representation, impact while providing for collective it is perhaps unsurprising that video approaches towards adaptation. The games continue to perpetuate app’s specialized privacy settings negative stereotypes, with inaccurate, also ensure that the rights of its misogynist, violent colonial indigenous users to their traditional representations being the prevalent knowledge remain protected — an model, even today. However, important feature given the fact that indigenous game developers are much indigenous technology in the seeking to overturn this model, form of knowledge and intellectual however, while addressing structural property continues to be expropriated inequalities at the game design phase by corporate interests and other and setting their own representations mainstream groups to this day. in games, with the goal not only of making the end-user experience indigenous peoples through technology Thematic Chapters: Empowering minorities and indigenous peoples through A scene from more accessible but also using digital acts of relationality in games. the videogame game creation as an expression of LaPensée designs and creates Thunderbird Strike. indigenous self-determination. games through collaboration with Credit: Elizabeth other indigenous artists, designers, Lapensée ‘True self-determination in games must elders and community members, happen from the code up’,4 according ensuring that the design process to Elizabeth LaPensée, an Assistant is inclusive from start to finish. The Professor of Media and Information creation of digital games is a method at Michigan State University and an through which indigenous people award-winning creator of digital video can create digital ‘self-determined games. The games she has developed, spaces’ for the expression of their such as the topical Thunderbird Strike identities on their own terms. (where players battle a ‘pipeline snake’) or the educational When Rivers Digital games are also one of the key Were Trails (focusing on the impact platforms to transmit cultural ideologies, of the assimilationist allotment acts teachings and aesthetics to indigenous of the 1890s) are expressions of her youth. LaPensée has embraced this and Métis worldviews. by encouraging her own children to The games incorporate indigenous engage in indigenous-created games ways of knowing into their designs, and through game development themes and story-telling formats, for workshops for indigenous youth. Her example by using non-linear paths work includes a collaboration with the that replicate traditional story-telling Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace structures, using characters from (AbTeC) research network, which indigenous stories, situating games coordinates training programs, known in historical realities and prioritizing as the Skins Workshops, for indigenous

4 LaPensée, E., ‘Games as enduring presence.’ PUBLIC, 54: Indigenous Art: New Media and the Digital, 2016, pp.178-186. 57 youth based out of Concordia University Moving forward: towards in Montreal, for which LaPensée a rights-based approach helped develop a curriculum. ‘Game to technology modding’ is the adaptation or creation of game content using commercial The pace and scale of societal change game engines or software. ‘Skinning’ brought about by the digital revolution is another word for this practice and today may be unprecedented, but lends its name to the program. Youth minority and indigenous communities share stories and ways of knowing from are leading the way in realizing positive their cultures and incorporate them ways to harness digital and emerging into game design, while building their technologies so as to encompass programming and software design inclusive and participatory approaches skills and reflecting authentic self- to technological design and innovation. representation in the games they create. Yet, as suggested at the start of this Many of the program participants chapter, there is the very real threat that are young women, and some of the technological advances are moving so games created out of this program quickly that they are proceeding without have included an active, empowered careful application of a human rights- female lead character who overturns based approach. With many minorities highly sexualized stereotypes. and indigenous peoples continuing to face structural discrimination across the Of course, it is difficult fully to escape world and at all levels of society, there the legacy of an industry that is still is the real possibility that technological characterized by inequalities and innovations will only reinforce existing discrimination. Even these pioneering discrimination and marginalization. digital games are still mostly developed in pre-existing Western-coded game As highlighted by the case studies engines, so that indigenous peoples here, however, this is not the only are building their games using possibility. With the right approach, software that was not developed with digital technologies could deliver indigenous worldviews or languages in wide-ranging and much needed mind. ‘Just as there are many cultures, benefits to communities struggling to there are many ways game engines protect their identities and livelihoods could take form, rooted in different in the face of environmental upheaval, ways of knowing, languages, and targeted violence and land rights practices,’ LaPensée explains. She violations. The following principles hopes in the future to see indigenous- present a positive framework for made game engines, bringing self- technology that promotes inclusion determination expression in games and respects the rights of minority to the next level. ‘While Indigenous and indigenous peoples. self-determination in digital games is currently limited by the systems Technologies should therefore be: within which games are developed, modified systems or Indigenous- • Accessible: In order to ameliorate made game engines can expand the impact of reinforced discrimination the possibilities of self-expression.’ through technology, minorities indigenous peoples through technology Thematic Chapters: Empowering minorities and indigenous peoples through and indigenous peoples must be • Disruptive: Technology should supported to develop their fluency not just support and replicate the in digital technologies and their status quo. It needs to be a force application towards the realization that can be harnessed to disrupt of their rights through education, existing power structures, including training and capacity development. those stemming from intersectional Accessibility must also extend discrimination towards those to members of minorities and marginalized groups belonging to indigenous peoples experiencing minority and indigenous communities. the impact of intersectional While technological innovations discrimination, such as women, may lead to a shake-up of existing LGBTQ+ groups, people with structural inequalities, technologies disabilities, youth and the elderly. that encourage the realization of the rights of minorities, indigenous • Affordable: Open-source peoples and other excluded technologies should be prioritized groups must be supported to allow and promoted among minorities these changes to take place. and indigenous peoples, with programs in place both to monitor • Participatory: Governments, industry whether associated costs are and civil society must apply a human excluding marginalized groups from rights-based approach to technology accessing software and to ensure with the active involvement of that clear frameworks are put in minorities and indigenous peoples place to remove these barriers. so that their rights are safeguarded. • Adaptive: Mainstream technologies As summarized by Enrique Piracés should not merely be standardized in The Future of Human Rights products aimed at a majority market. Technology: ‘Humans have created They need to be able to adapt to technology, and humans have used the needs and creative desires of technology to alter society. We should minorities and indigenous peoples, avoid giving agency to technology as communities with cultures and remind ourselves constantly that that also change and adapt. technology is created by people and • Respectful: Minority and indigenous organizations with agendas. These communities must be able to have are agendas that will impact us, and their privacy respected, especially we should aim to influence them.’5 As when technological innovations technology has an ever greater influence are designed specifically with their on our world, we must recognize that communities in mind. Collective how we respond to the challenges intellectual property rights also need and opportunities it presents today to be considered during the creation will ultimately shape every aspect and realization of technologies of our existence, including human that veer into these areas. rights, equality and social inclusion.

5 Piracés, E., ‘The future of human rights technology’, in M.K. Land and J.D. Aronson (eds), New Technologies for Human Rights Law and Practice, Cambridge University Press, 2018. 59 The challenges of technology and sustainable development: Some reflections on the future of the SDGs for minorities and indigenous peoples

Carolyn Stephens

Violet, an Aboriginal traditional landowner in Kakadu, uses a flaming palm frond to set fire to an area of bushland as part of a traditional system of controlled fire management. She constantly studies the landscape and burns areas at the right time so that the fires are not too hot but can still clear underlying debris which could fuel a larger, out of control, wildfire. Nr. Cooinda, Kakadu, Northern Territory, Australia. Credit: Matthew Abbott/Panos The challenges of technology and sustainable development: Some reflections on the future of the SDGs for minorities and indigenous peoples for SDGs the of on the future Some reflections and sustainable development: technology Thematic Chapters: The challenges of While technological advances have been linked to patterns of destructive unsustainable development, including the direct impacts of mining and other extractive industries on communal lands, they also offer new tools that open up the possibility of an alternative future. Indeed, in their widest definition, technologies are innovations developed to enhance living and social conditions, including health, well-being and the environment.

From participatory information and This chapter looks at the role of communication technologies (ICTs) technology in improving lives for to the use of traditional architectural minority and indigenous communities, design, members of minority and and is specifically focused on indigenous communities have had monitoring, implementing and a specific role in maintaining and achieving the Sustainable Development developing technological traditions: Goals (SDGs). It begins with an for example, minority and indigenous overview of the SDG process and its women have played a highly important implications, before looking in more role in developing and maintaining detail at the potential for improved bodies of knowledge around traditional data collection, inclusive access foods, medicine and child health. and the value of establishing the links between ‘traditional knowledge’ It is also important to recognize and ‘modern technology’. Though the role of older community members frequently presented as contrasting in maintaining and documenting visions, in practice they are often minority and indigenous languages, closely connected. Indeed, there is and to consider the ways in which growing awareness that some of technology can help or hinder the the solutions to many contemporary protection of unique practices and challenges, such as climate change, traditions. Furthermore, far from being could be built on long-established passive recipients, minorities and minority and indigenous perspectives indigenous peoples have themselves on environmental management, been the creators and users of agriculture and forestry. processes and goods that we consider as technology — and some of the Minorities, indigenous world’s most ancient cultures have left peoples and the SDGs the world with a legacy of building, medicine, agriculture and other forms The SDGs were adopted by the United of traditional knowledge that are still Nations (UN) in 2015 with the aim of compelling and relevant today. guiding the world towards a healthier, more inclusive and more sustainable 61 future. Comprising 17 goals and 169 This is the dilemma that today’s associated targets, they build on technologies pose. There is, the Millennium Development Goals understandably, much optimism (MDGs) that preceded them and are around their potential to help deliver set to continue until 2030. Part of momentum to achieving the targets the need for the SDGs, in fact, was of the SDGs. Yet unequal access to the failure of the MDGs to deliver technology, particularly in the twenty- on their goals for large sections of first century, could create further society, and, in particular, minorities barriers to change for minorities and indigenous peoples. These and indigenous peoples, affecting shortcomings make the realization access to multiple aspects of well- of the SDGs even more critical for being. It is not hard to see how minority and indigenous communities. rolling out sophisticated computer software for education in or There is no doubt that, as things investing in more centralized, high- currently stand, the most marginalized tech health care systems could continue to be left behind. Indigenous exacerbate the isolation of some peoples, for example, are estimated communities from these services to make up 5 per cent of the world’s if a concerted effort is not made to population but account for around 15 overcome the social, economic and per cent of the extremely poor. A similar political discrimination they face. picture emerges for ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities, who are It is also important to view technology also frequently confronted by similar through the conceptual and epistemic barriers to inclusion. Recognizing lens of minority and indigenous these disparities is essential as even communities, and of all groups within apparent success stories can conceal these communities. This means looking stark challenges for certain groups. , for example, was ranked as the highest performing country in the Sustainable Development Report 2019, an independent ranking of national progress towards achievements of the SDGs. Yet , an autonomous territory of Denmark with a majority Inuit indigenous population, still struggles with high poverty rates and Indigenous peoples the disruptive experience of post-war modernization, leading to such acute are estimated to social issues as alcoholism and one of the highest suicide rates in the world. make up 5% of the Development, in and of itself, does not inevitably bring positive outcomes for world’s population minorities and indigenous peoples if it but account for 15% is not rights-based and participatory. of the extremely poor. The challenges of technology and sustainable development: Some reflections on the future of the SDGs for minorities and indigenous peoples for SDGs the of on the future Some reflections and sustainable development: technology Thematic Chapters: The challenges of at technology as a form of power, and are visible in the data and review of not seeing it simply as a neutral tool. the goals and targets, with relevant Indeed, it is important to recognize indicators for indigenous peoples that technology has often been a included at a national level. Equally double-edged sword for minority and importantly, they have called for full and indigenous communities, and one meaningful indigenous participation in frequently used by dominant cultures implementation, follow-up and review. to gain control over their lands and ways of life. For example, technologies It is important to recognize that the such as modern information media demands made by the well-organized frequently act as drivers of exclusion, advocacy of the UN Permanent Forum as they are not adapted to the for Indigenous Peoples are as relevant diverse members of ethnic, religious for ethnic, religious and other minorities, or linguistic minorities or indigenous which by definition, are a highly diverse peoples, or people in need of assistive group and not easily represented technologies. The failure to tailor under one voice or umbrella. Minority these technologies to the specific community organizations and physical, cultural or linguistic needs coalitions, such as those representing of minorities is evident even within Dalits and Afro-descendants, have the context of the SDGs: the UN’s also produced research and briefings materials on the SDGs are only widely for campaigns around the SDGs. translated into the six official languages These repeatedly draw attention to the (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, needs of minorities and consideration Russian and Spanish), particularly of the achievement of the SDGs from disadvantaging linguistic minorities and the perspective of these groups. speakers of indigenous languages. Indeed, the SDGs are fundamentally Nevertheless, indigenous peoples about equality and inclusion. When have been able to play a much the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable more prominent role during the SDG Development was adopted by UN discussions than before, as reflected member states, they pledged to ensure in the inclusion of six direct references that ‘no one will be left behind’. Goal to indigenous peoples in the key 2015 10 is very clear: ‘Reduce inequality UN General Assembly Resolution within and among countries.’ 70/1, Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Improving the visibility Development. Building on this, the of minorities and indigenous UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous peoples in the SDGs Issues has issued a number of briefings and reports highlighting One of the most pressing issues the importance of ensuring that around achieving the SDGs, especially indigenous peoples remain at the for minorities and indigenous peoples, heart of the SDG process. Their is how to make visible the progress demands include the implementation of these diverse groups. All 17 SDGs, of the SDGs with full respect for the spanning a range of issues including rights of indigenous peoples, taking poverty (Goal 1), zero hunger (Goal 2), steps to ensure indigenous peoples health and well-being (Goal 3), THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (SDGS) 63 Goal 1 End poverty in all its forms everywhere Goal 2 End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote Goal 3 Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages Goal 4 Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all Goal 5 Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls Goal 6 Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all Goal 7 Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all Goal 8 Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all Goal 9 Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation Goal 10 Reduce inequality within and among countries Goal 11 Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable Goal 12 Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns Goal 13 Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts Goal 14 Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development Goal 15 Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss Goal 16 Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels Goal 17 Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development The challenges of technology and sustainable development: Some reflections on the future of the SDGs for minorities and indigenous peoples for SDGs the of on the future Some reflections and sustainable development: technology Thematic Chapters: The challenges of education (Goal 4) and gender equality organizations. For example, the (Goal 5), use a series of measurable Asia Dalit Rights Forum (ADRF) indicators to assess each goal and has country chapters that work monitor progress towards achievement with the national government, civil of the overall aim of sustainable society and local communities on development. From the inception of data collection, consultations and the goals, indigenous and minority monitoring to support the realization activists have lobbied for the inclusion of the SDGs. Recognizing that caste of specific indicators related to their barriers continue to undermine communities and the problems progress, Dalit activists have also they face. Minority and indigenous called for more ‘caste-sensitive’ communities have also advocated for indicators to monitor progress in their conceptualization of the goals to narrowing social inequalities. be taken into consideration. Poverty, for example, is conceptualized very Technology can be of huge importance differently by different minorities in these processes, in particular and indigenous peoples — and ICTs that allow official data, such the very concept is highly culturally as census, health and education specific and diversely constructed. information, to be easily disaggregated by individual populations. Other digital In this context, the first issue to look at tools, such as informal mapping and is how technology can lift the ‘persistent citizen-led data production, also offer invisibility’1 of the experience of significant potential. It is worth noting minority and indigenous communities that the most effective approaches in official statistics and data. The key combine technological innovation aspect here, which has been the with a commitment to inclusion and focus of campaigns by minority and empowerment. After all, the historic indigenous organizations for decades, absence or under-reporting of is the disaggregation of official data minority and indigenous populations to identify the specific situation of in many national censuses has often minority and indigenous groups. been the result of discrimination or political calculations due to their Just as importantly, disaggregated geographic or social isolation from data can then measure progress to the centres of power in their countries. improve the lives of these groups. Indeed, high-cost technologies could In Canada, the National Collaborating compound these issues by acting as Centre on Aboriginal Health has an excluding force, pushing poorer made this a central concern, arguing or remotely located communities that ‘fully disaggregating data helps further into the shadows. to expose hidden trends’ and ‘can make vulnerable groups more visible Disaggregated data collection should to policy makers’.2 Similar initiatives therefore include, among other have been undertaken by minority elements, the active involvement of

1 UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples: Implementing the Declaration on Indigenous Peoples, 2019. 2 National Collaborating Centre on Aboriginal Health, ‘The importance of disaggregated data’, 2010. Available at: https://www.nccih.ca/docs/context/FS-ImportanceDisaggregatedData-EN.pdf 65 members of minority and indigenous tested with indigenous communities communities in identifying and in various countries in Africa, Asia collecting information. The Indigenous and the Americas, and the website Peoples Major Group (civil society includes training materials, tools and organizations working on the SDGs online courses to help indigenous have been grouped by the UN into peoples to understand and thematic clusters, known as ‘major develop their own indicators.4 groups’) articulated this very clearly in a policy statement on the SDGs, In Nepal, for example, the pilot calling for ‘the inclusion of cultural phase worked with two indigenous identifiers in national census and communities. Tahal Thami, the population data’, the identification director of one of the local partner of relevant indicators for indigenous organizations for the project there, peoples ‘with their full and meaningful highlighted the strong investment participation’ and ‘community based that community members felt monitoring and information systems’ to through their engagement as direct complement national measurements.3 participants in data collection. He also highlighted that the process There have been significant attempts to had the added benefit of raising use ICTs to support monitoring of SDG awareness among local residents on progress for minority and indigenous their rights and a broader exploration communities by empowering them of how they could engage officials in the data collection process. For and donors with their own views for example, the Indigenous Navigator ‘a self-determined development’, is an online platform designed to as he described it: ‘It opened an support communities in measuring and opportunity to reflect on the concept assessing their rights. The Navigator of poverty. Poverty was realized to be includes a toolkit for indigenous users not only about economic concerns in to teach themselves how to evaluate pecuniary terms, but more so about and monitor their rights, including lack of other intangible matters such their progress towards the SDGs. as powerlessness, illiteracy and Each domain highlights the right of having no voice, among others.’ indigenous peoples and its relevant SDG target. Importantly, the initiative The role of technologies has taken a holistic approach to in delivering the SDGs the provision of this technology by providing extensive education and Technology does not simply have capacity development in the use a role in making progress visible of these technologies. During the within the SDGs for minorities project’s pilot phase, for example, and indigenous peoples but also a community questionnaire was has a significant role in delivering

3 Indigenous Peoples Major Group, ‘Policy Brief on Sustainable Development Goals and Post-2015 Development Agenda’. Available at: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/ content/documents/7036IPMG%20Policy%20Brief%20Working%20Draft%202015.pdf 4 Indigenous Navigator, ‘Indigenous peoples: Disaggregated data needed for monitoring SDGs’. Available at: http://nav.indigenousnavigator.com/index.php/en/

news/120-indigenous-peoples-disaggregated-data-needed-for-monitoring-sdgs minorities and indigenous peoples for SDGs the of on the future Some reflections and sustainable development: technology Thematic Chapters: The challenges of A large many of the targets. This section are often excluded, isolated and locked sign gives considers the potential of technology into poverty, thereby increasing the information in English about to support the implementation impact of disease and disability on Covid-19 on of sustainable development. a person, their family and society.’ 5 the street in Kashmir, India. For instance, access to assistive These issues are especially pertinent Credit: Atul Loke technologies is especially important for minority and indigenous persons for members of minorities and with disabilities, who face intersectional indigenous peoples who also live discrimination, as members of a with disabilities. Accessible and marginalized community and as a result assistive technologies such as screen- of their mental or physical impairment. readers for visually impaired persons, These barriers are specific to minority or wheelchairs for physically impaired indigenous persons with disabilities as persons, subtitles for hearing-impaired they are not experienced by either their persons and video calls to facilitate non-disabled minority or indigenous communication in sign languages counterparts or their disabled can lower or eliminate barriers to counterparts from other dominant education, training and employment, groups. A recent example is the lack health care, and political and social of information available on Covid-19 participation. According to the World in accessible formats and in culturally Health Organization (WHO), ‘assistive appropriate, indigenous mother- technology reduces the need for formal tongue languages, which specifically health and support services, long- affecting the ability of minority or term care and the work of caregivers. indigenous persons with disabilities to Without assistive technology, people protect themselves against the virus.

5 WHO, ‘Assistive technology’, 18 March 2018. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/assistive-technology 67

As with other technologies, the issue excluded populations. In Taiwan, for is not simply the presence or absence example, the Indigenous Peoples of technologies but also the extent to Cultural Foundation has developed the which those available are tailored to Taiwan Indigenous Television (TITV) the specific needs and preferences channel to tackle a wide range of issues of certain communities. For instance, faced by indigenous peoples across indigenous peoples may take the country, including loss of language, a different view of what constitutes cultural attrition, and lack of access ‘disability’ and even challenge the to health information and educational concept itself. An International Labour opportunities more generally. The TITV Organization (ILO) report on this network is attempting to overcome theme reports that ‘the ancestral Maori these barriers by using the channel to conception of humanity embraces reach a diverse range of communities. difference and uniqueness, seeing disability as a natural part of one’s In remote settings, where minority being, and not as an impairment. and indigenous communities are Indigenous peoples’ rejection of physically isolated, access to food, the concept of impairment as linked education, medicine and energy can to a limitation was also evident in be especially challenging. In these indigenous peoples in the Americas.’6 settings, technology can play a vital This perspective will clearly inform role in helping communities access the nature of assistive technologies services. For example, telemedicine required. The fact that persons with has considerable potential to deliver disabilities from some indigenous health services to isolated communities. communities have found standard In Australia, the Aboriginal Community equipment, produced externally Controlled Health Service (ACCHS) without their involvement, ill suited to is a specially designed service which their particular context points to the aims to provide culturally appropriate necessity of ensuring their involvement health care to indigenous Australians, at every stage. Inclusive access hinges particularly in remote settings. A recent not only on the numbers in physical study evaluating this programme possession of a particular technology found that the ‘telehealth’ achieved but also their ability to shape its design positive results because, crucially, it and development from inception. was managed by local residents with an emphasis on ‘holistic and culturally ICTs, if imposed insensitively or without appropriate care’, which enabled consultation with communities, can pose the technology to enhance access their own challenges to non-majority to indigenous health workers while cultures and values. Nevertheless, reducing the burden on the community. when accompanied by a rights-based approach, television, film and other Remote minority and indigenous multimedia content can support the communities can also benefit from delivery of essential services, such modern technologies to access as education and health, to otherwise electricity and energy. The track record

6 Rivas Velarde, M.C., ‘Indigenous persons with disabilities: access to training and employment’,

ILO discussion paper, 2015. minorities and indigenous peoples for SDGs the of on the future Some reflections and sustainable development: technology Thematic Chapters: The challenges of Even ‘green’ development can generate disastrous human impacts for communities if undertaken without free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) or respect for land rights. By way of contrast, a solar energy project in rural Argentina funded by the — frequently criticized for its sponsorship of infrastructure programmes with poor human rights outcomes — was able to deliver sustainable energy to hundreds of households through a ‘bottom-up’ approach that combined small-scale, off-grid solar technologies suited to remote communities with a substantial capacity-building component to support local residents in adopting the new technologies and overcoming information barriers.

In situations of conflict, particularly in remote settings of environmental conflict, technology can facilitate the documentation and protection of the rights of minority and indigenous A Baka man of many development programmes in communities while also protecting in the Congo this area, including many which have vital ecosystems. For example, an Basin climbs up enjoyed funding from international a tree to collect award-winning community mapping honey. donors, is mixed: indigenous programme in Cameroon and the Credit: Graeme communities in particular have been Democratic Republic of Congo Williams subjected to violence, displacement aims to connect isolated forest and dispossession of their ancestral communities and central policy- lands not only to accommodate fossil makers to support the inclusion and fuel extraction and mining but also participation of marginalized forest hydroelectric dams. Many of these dwellers. The programme helps projects, even those justified on forest communities to map their land environmental grounds, still represent interactively and protect the forests. the sort of one-sided and exploitative This mapping project has supported use of technology that SDG 17 implicitly 800 forest communities across the cautioned against, calling instead Congo Basin to produce maps of for ‘knowledge sharing on mutually their lands and resources covering agreed terms’ and ‘the development, over 5 million hectares. In 2016, transfer, dissemination and diffusion MappingForRights was recognized of environmentally sound technologies by the UN Framework Convention on to developing countries on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as part of favourable terms’. the UN Momentum for Change awards. 69

For land-based communities, this but also how they are applied which is an example of the ways in which determines the extent to which they technologies can support SDGs on deliver positive change to minorities and climate change (Goal 13), sustainable indigenous communities. Consultation, management of terrestrial resources participation, capacity development (Goal 15), just, peaceful and inclusive and culturally appropriate design societies (Goal 16), and sustainable are as critical to the sustainability of development overall (Goal 17). a technology in these contexts as engineering, electronics or other ‘hard’ Activities such as community mapping elements in its make-up. and documentation, using ICTs such as satellites, mobile phones and the An alternative vision internet, can also support ocean- of development reliant minority communities. Simple modern technologies can help Technology has a significant role fishermen and women protect their to play in the attainment of the ecosystem and fellow species. The SDGs for minorities and indigenous Food and Agriculture Organization peoples — bringing the best of (FAO), for instance, has looked at minority and indigenous technological how both physical and institutional understanding together with technologies can be used to support advances in sustainable technologies and protect small-scale sustainable internationally, including in ICTs and in minority fishing communities. education, medicine, architecture and What these examples perhaps planning. Ethnic, linguistic and religious demonstrate most clearly is that it is not minorities and indigenous peoples simply the technologies themselves, have a rich history of multiple and

Indigenous children wearing face masks against the spread of the coronavirus in the Parque Das Tribos. In view of the rampant pandemic, representatives of indigenous organizations from the Amazon region have asked the international community for urgent support. Manaus, Brazil. Credit: Lucas Silva/ Alamy The challenges of technology and sustainable development: Some reflections on the future of the SDGs for minorities and indigenous peoples for SDGs the of on the future Some reflections and sustainable development: technology Thematic Chapters: The challenges of diverse technologies, spanning science, of appropriate human settlements language and the arts, that are still in provided to indigenous peoples’, use today. This might include visible the ‘proportion or level of participation cultural assets, such as traditional water of indigenous peoples in planning management systems and physical and management’, and ‘provision of infrastructure, but also intangible access for indigenous peoples to their heritage such as herbal medicines and religious and cultural sites and access other forms of knowledge that represent to and repatriation of their ceremonial a wider understanding of technology. objects and human remains’.8 Similar indicators have already been used Given that more than half of the to assess the situation of minority world’s population now lives in groups in cities, demonstrating the towns and cities across the world, value of disaggregated data-gathering SDG 11 (‘To make cities and human systems when these are in place settlements inclusive, safe, resilient to monitor SDG progress. In the and sustainable’) has particular United Kingdom (UK), for instance, relevance for minorities and indicators monitor the inclusion of indigenous peoples, as indigenous black and minority ethnic groups city-dwellers are often overlooked: in a wide variety of parameters, despite the fact that there are millions including education, housing, work of indigenous urban residents living in and health care. ICTs play a prominent cities across the world, ‘the common role in these efforts and also help image is of isolated communities cut advocacy groups to disseminate off from the modern world, largely findings to a wider audience. disengaged from the challenges and advantages of the urban future.’7 In Discussions of urban planning practice, however, large numbers of and technologies are frequently indigenous peoples are living in urban dominated by the paradigm of areas and their numbers continue ‘smart cities’. Though spanning to grow as many others migrate to a range of approaches, the field has cities, driven there in search of work nevertheless attracted (alongside and services, or the need to flee much investment and rhetorical violence or displacement from their support from governments) places of origin. Indigenous people considerable criticism for its emphasis have themselves proposed a more on technological innovation at the nuanced and participatory approach to expense of social inclusion, with the monitoring of Goal 11, informed by minorities often overlooked or their own experiences of discrimination sidelined in their plans. At their worst, and exclusion in cities. The Indigenous they can actively disempower these Peoples Major Group proposed groups: for example, Amnesty Tech, a number of sub-indicators in this area, ’s unit focusing for example, including the ‘number on emerging technologies, has

7 Stephens, C., ‘The indigenous experience of urbanization’, in P. Grant (ed.), State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2015: Focus on Cities, London, MRG, 2015. 8 Indigenous Peoples Major Group, ‘Policy brief on Sustainable Development Goals and Post-2015 Development Agenda’, op. cit. 71 accused China of co-opting ‘smart’ Finally, indigenous peoples and urban technologies in Xinjiang to minorities have always made a very further embed its repressive ‘digital strong case for their role in the police state’ in the lives of the Muslim protection of the planet — a major Uyghur minority.9 The potential for goal of the SDGs as a whole and technologies to subject individuals the focus of Goal 13 (‘Take urgent and communities to surveillance and action to combat climate change and discrimination, whether intentionally or its impacts by regulating emissions indirectly, is playing out in cities across and promoting developments in the world. There is no guarantee that renewable energy’) and related goals a city built on the best technologies around sustainable development and will be fairer or more inclusive environmental protection. There are for its minority and indigenous some significant win-win projects residents if the right checks and across the world that benefit from protections are not in place. traditional approaches to environmental stewardship encompassing both the Yet there is a wealth of knowledge and conservation of endangered species practice that minorities and indigenous and the protection of minority or peoples can offer as an alternative indigenous communities in these areas. technological system in relation to Many of these programmes depend contemporary challenges such as heavily on technology for capacity urban planning, architecture and interior building, monitoring and dissemination design. Indeed, this is perhaps one of of their results. For example, an the most fertile areas for the interface of innovative programme in Papua New traditional and modern technologies in Guinea aims to preserve a threatened building and construction. Some recent species of tree kangaroo while initiatives in Canada demonstrate how supporting economic development for productive an indigenous-led approach local minority groups — all supported to architecture can be. In Vancouver, through an international collaboration a radical plan to develop a new urban of scientists and local peoples. quarter called Sen’ákw, on the site of a Squamish village of the same name This example points to two important razed to the ground a century ago, and related points around technology. was approved in December 2019 by First, that technology should be 87 per cent of voting Squamish understood in a broad and holistic members. The development will be fashion, spanning not only the latest characterized by a unique architecture developments in science, energy strongly informed by the community’s and engineering but also established traditional design, reinterpreted for systems of knowledge belonging to contemporary needs. Importantly, minorities and indigenous peoples too, it breaks the long history of that are still relevant to today’s urban exclusion in Canada that has challenges. Second, that some of seen its indigenous communities the most effective programmes can resettled to the urban periphery. combine modern technologies with

9 Begault, L. and Khazrik, J., ‘Smart cities: dreams capable of becoming nightmares’, Amnesty International, 28 June 2019. The challenges of technology and sustainable development: Some reflections on the future of the SDGs for minorities and indigenous peoples for SDGs the of on the future Some reflections and sustainable development: technology Thematic Chapters: The challenges of traditional knowledge and community around ‘development’ that overlook capacity building. This is especially these dimensions and have frequently evident in attempts to address climate proved devastating for communities. change: there is now increasing recognition that minority and Crucially, the SDGs focus on indigenous knowledge systems and sustainable development. In resource management approaches particular, there is the call in Goal 17 offer an important element in global for ‘knowledge sharing on mutually adaptation, and may be cheaper and agreed terms’ and ‘the development, more sustainable than some of the transfer, dissemination and resource-intensive ‘technological’ diffusion of environmentally sound solutions being proposed. After technologies to developing countries all, indigenous organizations on favourable terms’ — a far cry from had been sounding the alarm the exploitative and one-sided use on climate change for decades of technologies that characterizes before governments belatedly much of the activities of mining, recognized it as a policy concern. oil and other extractive industries. This is what distinguishes the vision In their statement ‘Commitments of the SDGs from the socially and for Action on Climate’, the World environmentally destructive activities Indigenous Peoples’ Initiative to frequently carried out in the name the UN Climate Action Summit in of development by governments, September 2019 argued for a rights- corporations and donor agencies. based response to the climate crisis that included, among other elements, Conclusion access to ‘the development of renewable energies in accordance The outbreak of the Covid-19 with our self-determination and FPIC’.10 pandemic, besides threatening to The statement goes on to elaborate undermine much progress in the a detailed set of recommendations SDGs, has also brought to the surface to ‘implement and promote a rights- the underlying inequalities minorities based approach and access to and and indigenous peoples face not implementation of renewable energy only in health but also education, development, for a just transition livelihoods and other key areas. away from fossil fuels’. This is just The heavy tolls even in industrialized one example of how minorities and countries like the UK, where emerging indigenous peoples are actively data suggests that death rates among engaging with the latest technologies, those with a sub-Saharan African but from a perspective grounded background and those with a Pakistani in human rights — in the process background in hospitals in England are challenging conventional narratives around 2.5 times higher than for white

10 Indigenous Peoples Major Group for Sustainable Development, ‘Statement of the indigenous peoples constituency on the session: “Linking National, Regional, and Global Dimensions of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, 20 May 2020’. Available at: https://www.indigenouspeoples-sdg.org/index.php/english/all-resources/ ipmg-position-papers-and-publications/ipmg-statements-and-interventions 73

British people, show that ‘development’ citizen-led ICTs, could help deliver alone is no guarantee of protection a clearer and more inclusive from the devastation of the virus. evidence based on the inequalities Good governance and human rights they continue to experience. have also been important factors in determining the success of different • Overcome physical and countries in their response. social barriers to access and availability of essential services. It is therefore more important than Geographic exclusion and other ever to recognize that technologies, constraints around services still while often presented as ‘neutral’, exist for minority and indigenous can replicate discrimination without communities. If they are not a clear rights-based approach. To implemented in an inclusive continue to move towards the targets fashion, technologies could of the SDGs, with minorities and compound rather than alleviate indigenous peoples at the heart of that these constraints: for example, process, we need to ensure that social if technologies are unaffordable inclusion and sustainability underpin for the most marginalized these approaches. With every new communities. Poverty can and has technological advance, as with any prevented many communities from development, it is important to look accessing services more generally. at how patterns of exclusion have Technology, and particularly the contributed to unequal service access, high cost of technologies, could and how technology might either help make their availability dependent or exacerbate this situation. All too on external income sources often, the design and implementation such as international donors. of technology initiatives lack minority or indigenous peoples’ participation, • Ensure that technologies are or consideration of their social, delivered accessibly and equitably economic or political implications. for minority and indigenous With this in mind, some principles users. Access to information and to help ensure that technologies knowledge in general has often support rather than hinder sustainable been obstructed for indigenous development are listed below: and minority communities. New technologies could compound • Ensure technologies work to this if communities are not improve visibility for minorities provided with the tools to use and indigenous peoples these effectively and on their own in data monitoring. Lack of terms. Technology-led service visibility, particularly in terms of delivery, such as telemedicine disaggregated data, remains and online education platforms, perhaps the greatest challenge should therefore be accompanied facing both minorities and by adequate training and capacity indigenous peoples. Data tools development for communities. and other technologies, including The challenges of technology and sustainable development: Some reflections on the future of the SDGs for minorities and indigenous peoples for SDGs the of on the future Some reflections and sustainable development: technology Thematic Chapters: The challenges of • Recognize and address the from technologies designed ‘for’ power dynamics inherent in many minorities and indigenous peoples mainstream technologies. Most to those made ‘with’ and ‘by’ them. digital technologies are designed This can include ways in which by majority institutions and minority and indigenous peoples developed in dominant languages. conceptualize the SDGs and the Tools-based resources offer a way role of technology in achieving forward, but these resources need them. Starting from this point, to be culturally appropriate and technology can look very different. disseminated more widely in many indigenous and minority languages. • Take steps to integrate local For many peoples, oral transmission perspectives on technology. of knowledge and communication is This requires a holistic approach key, and this is currently a significant that encompasses traditional barrier to some technologies knowledge as a living and evolving being meaningfully accessed set of technologies in their own and used by these groups. right. Many programmes have successfully combined new • Ensure participation is central technologies with local approaches to every stage of technological to various challenges, including delivery, including upstream design climate change adaptation, to and development. Perhaps key ensure more effective development to this challenge is the move outcomes for communities. 75 Editor’s preface: minorities, indigenous peoples and the right to culture Africa 77

In Africa, the legacy of colonialism continues to contribute to poverty, conflict and inequalities across the region. The ’s experience of technology was for centuries one-sided, with Britain, and other European powers extracting vast quantities of timber, ore and precious metals to fuel their industrial growth while the populations under their control remained impoverished and excluded from any positive development.

This is illustrated by the history of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where, after years of brutal exploitation under Belgian rule for rubber and other resources, then the violence and corruption of Mobutu Sese Seko’s dictatorship, the country finds itself today at the heart of the global supply chain for cobalt. A valuable mineral used in lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles, mobile devices and other high-end technologies, which is mined by tens of thousands of workers, including many children, in extremely hazardous conditions for around US$1 a day.

In Africa, as elsewhere, online platforms present a new frontline for minorities, indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups which have long faced discrimination and exclusion. In Tanzania, for instance, persons with albinism contend with verbal abuse online, as well as stigma and even the threat of abduction and dismemberment due to superstition. And yet this same technology has also enabled the community to express themselves more openly and challenge prejudice.

The same holds true of other technologies, such as mobile phones. While their reliance on minerals such as cobalt brings associated human rights challenges, they have enabled a burgeoning mobile finance industry that has empowered Turkana pastoralists in Kenya, among others. These new technologies are providing them with additional coping strategies to maintain their traditional pastoralist lifestyles despite the challenges of a rapidly changing climate. Mobile devices have also provided indigenous activists with tools to protect their land rights from the depredations of illegal logging and other threats. In Cameroon, for example, forest-dwelling Baka have been involved in designing innovative digital mapping apps that they can then use on smartphones to document environmental crimes. Africa: Introduction Cameroon: Confronting environmental injustice and illegal logging in the rainforest through indigenous-led technology

Simon Hoyte

A Baka community member using the Sapelli app to monitor animal species in their forests. Credit: Simon Hoyte 79

With its extensive forests, Cameroon has in recent years seen an increasing focus on conservation, encouraged by international organizations such as the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). Yet, in the words of a young Baka man living in south-eastern Cameroon, close to the border with Congo, ‘the majority don’t have the knowledge of the forest and to heal the illnesses’.

He understands all too well the peoples and have consequently contradiction of forest conservation in accumulated an incredibly intricate Central Africa: that those who interact ecological knowledge of these most intimately with the forest and forests. This is most apparent through hold the necessary knowledge to their language — for example, Baka sustain it are almost entirely excluded have over 28 words to describe from contributing. The entirety of elephants, depending on their age, Cameroon’s forest estate is under sex, health and relationship to both government ownership, with more other elephants and humans, as than a third allocated as private well as 19 words for gorilla. There is logging concessions and most of a specific word for the time, in the the remainder annexed as people- late afternoon, when honeybees free wildlife reserves. Such zoning leave their hive and search for nectar has forcibly evicted indigenous Baka in the forest (mòngombe), and for communities from their ancestral the noise of honeybees early in the forests to roadsides, leading to morning (màkelo). One Baka village widespread exclusion from the has cited 624 different species of forest resources which the Baka rely medicinal plants and 580 plants upon not only for subsistence and on which they rely for sustenance. medicine, but also as the basis of their Elders and youths alike have worldview, identity and spiritual beliefs. sophisticated spatial knowledge of where these plants grow and where Baka are one of Central Africa’s animal species congregate, and at indigenous hunter-gatherer what specific times of the year. Such communities, surviving entirely within knowledge is not held in isolation the rainforests shared between from the forest but relies on constant Cameroon, Gabon and Congo- interaction: after all, the best way to Brazzaville. Alongside the San find wild safa yams is by following population of southern Africa, they are the calls of the sangòngò bird. one of humanity’s oldest contemporary Cameroon: Confronting environmental injustice and illegal logging in the rainforest through indigenous-led technology indigenous-led through injustice and illegal logging in the rainforest environmental Confronting Cameroon: When it comes to protecting the forest with them. If the process of mapping from wildlife crime and , is done in an inclusive manner, a legacy of French colonial management whereby communities are involved in with overarching power renders what to map and why, it can serve as indigenous knowledge inferior to that of a significant tool for empowerment. ‘experts’ and the state. Interestingly, the problem locally is often not that the Baka Government hunting restrictions are not considered part of the forest, but imposed on the Baka made the opposite: as forest dwellers, they are communities initially wary of the regarded as being too poorly educated project: ‘Will the technology tell us or ‘lazy’ to meaningfully take part in forest what we can and can’t hunt?’, one conservation. With studies showing community member asked. But by that indigenous-led conservation is prioritizing the communities’ concerns equally or more effective at safeguarding and leadership, it quickly became biodiversity than that led by outsiders, clear to all that they themselves are and that exclusion is more likely to drive in control of what the technology is communities into illegal activities, it is used for. The smartphone software unfortunate that conservation authorities developed by ExCiteS, Sapelli, enables and non-governmental organizations this through a process of ‘co-design’. (NGOs) in this region still largely practise Not only is the concept of the project such ‘conservation from above’. informed by local concerns, but the physical design of the user interface is If forest managers sat and listened led by community members. Icons are to Baka voices, they would quickly used instead of text so that barriers hear: ‘Outsiders are destroying the of illiteracy are overcome. Because forest while local people need it being invited to participate is so rare, for subsistence’, ‘The government there is often surprise, and even needs to know our capacity to a great deal of laughter, when it is protect this forest’, but ‘We are not recommended that participants draw empowered to stop such activities.’ icons themselves, whether it be in a The design of mainstream conservation notebook, using a stick to draw on models inhibits Baka involvement the ground or making animal prints because they rely on high levels in the mud. While the process builds of literacy and pre-designed, trust with community members, most expensive missions. But participative importantly it ensures that icons are technology is changing this. locally relevant and distinguishable, and creates a sense of ownership: in To take action on community concerns, the words of Monjombe*, a Baka elder, participative mapping projects have ‘All our hearts are in it.’ On seeing their been launched with eight communities own icons in the Sapelli smartphone in collaboration with the Extreme app for the first time, there can be Citizen Science group (ExCiteS) based disbelief and excitement that they at University London. Mapping have co-created this technology. has emerged as a powerful way to connect indigenous knowledge and Deciding on what to include together values with decision-makers who might creates a space for the community to otherwise ignore or struggle to interact decide on their priorities and suggest 81 ‘Outsiders are destroying the forest while local people need it for subsistence. The government needs to know our capacity to protect this forest, but we are not empowered to stop such activities.’

innovative ideas to achieve them. ID system. The posing of these sorts In one meeting, an elder asked if of questions is a good indication they could also use the phone to that the community has understood monitor animals in order to produce the potential risks of the project — a map of their distribution. This idea an important part of the free, prior and was subsequently shared with other informed consent process. Feeling communities, all of which decided that satisfied after this process, a Baka they too would like to monitor animals. man said: ‘What we could not openly Going against widespread bad practice, speak about, we can now report.’ a community protocol is formed by each community on how exactly the Physically handling smartphones and data will be collected, who it will be practising the creation of audio clips shared with and, most importantly, what and photos — the first time many it will be used for. Unintended negative had heard their own voice or seen outcomes from the data collection themselves in a photo — proved to must be discussed and mitigated be an empowering experience even through each community’s protocol. before any data had been collected. One community member, for example, Baka are not regarded as trustworthy by expressed his concerns about how forest managers, as confirmed by the the data could be co-opted by officials responses of NGOs and government with their own agenda: ‘I am worried officials to the project team members: that if we map interesting animals ‘They will steal and sell the phones!’ the authorities will expand the park.’ Such attitudes have been a major barrier for Baka to access these Most communities decided they technologies until the project began. wanted to make reports of wildlife crime, such as poachers’ shelters, Challenges such as charging the gun cartridges and killed animals, devices and preventing damage but this renders them at risk from are easily solved with portable solar reprisals, as one community pointed chargers and by choosing rugged, out: ‘Such a project could put us in waterproof phones. Community elders serious trouble with the Bantus [the often have highly callused fingers, dominant local group]’ and ‘When the an impediment to using the phone’s information is sent, how do you keep touchscreen, but this has been us secure?’ As a result, multiple security overcome through light-hearted techniques were established, including sessions of testing the use of knuckles anonymizing the users through a colour or noses as a replacement. After Cameroon: Confronting environmental injustice and illegal logging in the rainforest through indigenous-led technology indigenous-led through injustice and illegal logging in the rainforest environmental Confronting Cameroon: taking a report, audio clip and photo mid-2017: the majority of communities using Sapelli, the data is stored on have agreed to pass this on to the phone until it can send to a secure ExCiteS researchers and conservation database. Sapelli exploits pockets workers in the region to support of mobile network in the forest by their efforts to tackle wildlife crime. attempting to send the data by mobile This is changing things on the internet and SMS every five minutes. ground – some villages see more wildlife and fewer traffickers, and When data is received by members all have experienced a sense of of the ExCiteS team, community empowerment. In the words of Kelepa, protocols are consulted. Most often, a Baka community member: ‘It shows wildlife crime data is accumulated our ability to work, to be part of it on an online map, which reveals and show we are not lazy.’ However, hotspots across the landscape and these technological solutions can provides local knowledge on the only achieve so much in a context realities of the wildlife trade. Animal where corruption, poor governance monitoring data, usually in the form and discrimination remain pervasive. of recorded footprints, gorilla nests, It is to be hoped that this wealth of chimpanzee cries, pangolin burrows data can support more systemic or elephant paths, is added to the change, particularly in the form of map and utilized for more efficient land and access rights for the Baka. conservation planning. Over 1,100 data points, supported by 1,210 * All the names in this case study photos and audio clips, have so far have been changed to protect been taken since the project began in the anonymity of respondents.

Over 1,100 data points, supported by 1,210 photos and audio clips, have so far been taken since the project began in 2017: the majority of communities have agreed to pass this on to ExCiteS researchers and conservation workers in the region to support their efforts to tackle wildlife crime. 83 Democratic Republic of Congo: As global demand for cobalt soars, child miners pay the price

Hamimu Masudi

With its abundant natural resources, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been prey to exploitation since it was first ‘discovered’ in 1877 by and explorer, Sir Henry Morton Stanley. Stanley returned in 1879 with the backing of King Leopold II of Belgium, who later turned the region into his own personal fiefdom.

In the 150 or so years since, the DRC and Nagasaki during the Second has repeatedly suffered plunder, civil World War was mined in the DRC. unrest and the most egregious forms of human rights abuses — much of which Now, as we transition from cars with is linked to the struggle to control its internal combustion engines to the wealth of metals, minerals and forests. new generation of electric vehicles (EVs), the DRC again finds itself When rubber became a key raw bearing the human cost of the latest material in the manufacture of tyres, technology. Some 60 per cent of the the country became the world’s world’s supply of cobalt — a mineral largest producer, supplying European widely used in the batteries that power factories throughout the second EVs, as well as such tech devices industrial revolution — but this came as smartphones, tablets and laptops with a heavy toll for local communities, — comes from the DRC, with much who were subjected to forced labour, of this production concentrated in displacement and other atrocities. Later what was formerly known as Katanga on, the uranium used to produce the province, a resource-rich region in bombs that dropped on Hiroshima the south of the country that has Democratic Republic of Congo: As global demand for cobalt soars, child miners pay the price soars, child miners pay cobalt Congo: As global demand for Democratic Republic of to dust containing cobalt can result in fatal ‘hard metal lung disease’ and that inhalation of cobalt particles could cause a range of respiratory problems, including asthma. Despite this, the vast majority of mine workers do not have even basic protective equipment such as face masks or gloves. Today, with few safeguards in place, many children continue to be engaged in this hazardous work. Previous estimates by UNICEF have suggested that some 40,000 children were working in mines in southern DRC in perilous and exploitative conditions.

According to international law, the involvement of children in mining constitutes one of the most egregious forms of child labour. In its most recent comments and conclusions, Children pass nevertheless struggled with widespread the International Labour Organization an enormous poverty and intermittent outbreaks (ILO) Committee of Experts reviewing mining slag the DRC’s adherence to the Worst heap of copper of inter-ethnic violence. In particular, and cobalt the mining industry has attracted Forms of Child Labour Convention that is being many migrant labourers, adding to (ILO No. 182, 1999) called on the processed government to intensify its efforts in by a Belgian- potential tensions. Indeed, many have Congolese- typically come from the Kasai region, preventing children from working in American which has itself recently borne the mines and ensuring that thorough joint venture. investigations and prosecutions Lubumbashi, brunt of massive displacement. Haut Katanga, of offenders are carried out, with Democratic This mining hub has also become the adequate penalties imposed. Republic of Congo. site of an ongoing human rights crisis However, the chain of culpability Credit: JB linked directly to its natural resources. Russell /Panos Children as young as 10 years old are extends beyond the DRC itself to the reported to be digging in trenches, large global multinationals which trade, labouring in rivers, sifting and sorting purchase or use cobalt. Given limited the mineral and carrying sacks of regulation, cobalt mined by children ore heavier than their own body can change hands at local markets weight. Even those too young to work from Congolese artisanal miners to themselves are forced to spend the international brokers, ending up in entire day in mining sites with their a laptop or an EV thousands of miles mothers, breathing in toxic fumes. away. Among the largest international companies listed in this trade is Research by Amnesty International and Congo Dongfang Mining International African Resource Watch (Afrewatch) in (CDM), a subsidiary of Chinese-based 2016 confirmed that chronic exposure Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Company, 85 and the Swiss mining giant Glencore. analysts estimate that, worldwide, car Both corporations then sell it on for companies will sell around 2.5 million processing before it is then bought electric passenger vehicles in 2020, by manufacturers of EVs, mobile 20 per cent more than in 2019. devices and other technologies. While this could bring considerable Both companies were named, environmental benefits, the increase though not included as defendants, in EV production could have a in a landmark legal case filed in the corresponding impact on child labour United States (US) on 17 December in the DRC. Unless safeguards are built 2019 by the human rights law firm into cobalt supply chains — starting International Rights Advocates on from local artisanal mines, and all behalf of 14 parents and children the way to consumers purchasing from the DRC against the electric car cobalt-containing vehicles — thousands manufacturer Tesla and a number of of children will continue to suffer technology giants — including Apple, exploitation, abuse and the risk of Alphabet (the parent company of injury or death. If so, then the DRC Google), Dell and Microsoft — for will yet again bear the burden of reparations and rehabilitation on global demand for its resources. account of forced labour. The parents This means more human suffering state that some of the children and environmental destruction so had been killed in tunnel collapses that more affluent countries can while others had been paralysed benefit from new technologies, or suffered life-altering injuries from while its own population continues accidents. In the case, the plaintiffs to experience some of the lowest are also seeking compensation levels of development in the world. for unjust enrichment, negligent supervision and intentional infliction of emotional distress on the complainants. The case was still at an early stage at the time of writing.

The need to enforce clear human rights standards in the cobalt mining sector will only become more pressing as global demand About 60 per cent of increases. As countries work towards the world’s supply of fulfilling their commitments under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, cobalt comes from the as well as more specific initiatives DRC. The mineral is used such as the 2015 Declaration on Electro-Mobility and Climate Change in batteries that power and Call to Action, demand for EVs electric vehicles, as well — and therefore cobalt — is rising. Indeed, global demand for cobalt as smartphones, tablets has already tripled in the past five and laptops. years. In line with this trend, market Democratic Republic of Congo: As global demand for cobalt soars, child miners pay the price soars, child miners pay cobalt Congo: As global demand for Democratic Republic of Kenya: For Turkana pastoralists struggling with drought, mobile finance offers a lifeline

Hamimu Masudi

Etukoit, a Turkana woman with a child, walks out of her homestead. Turkana District, Kenya. Credit: Frederic Courbet 87

Living on the periphery of society, in one of the harshest, driest and hardest-to-reach north-western regions of Kenya, the Turkana people have come to be regarded as great survivors. Despite regular severe droughts, they manage to make a living by herding cattle, sheep and camels. They often have to walk long distances and dig wells in dry riverbeds to find suitable water for themselves and their animals.

However, the highly drought-susceptible beneficiaries to choose where they region has been experiencing more allocate their resources and what frequent and severe drought conditions, needs they consider most pressing. linked to climate change, making it Best of all, with the proliferation a humanitarian hotspot and a regular of mobile telecommunications recipient of relief aid. For instance, services such as M-PESA, a mobile in 2011 the region experienced what banking platform owned by Kenya’s was described by the UN as ‘the Safaricom communications, this form worst drought in over half a century’, of disaster response management exposing more than 3.5 million can now happen in real time. Kenyans and 500,000 refugees to starvation. Malnutrition rates shot up to their highest levels in decades, with about 384,000 children suffering from acute malnutrition — along with 90,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women. In recent years, food insecurity has been made worse by escalating cattle raids that have led to significant In 2011 the region livestock loss and displacement. experienced what was Although food aid has made up described by the UN as the bulk of emergency responses to crises such as those faced by ‘the worst drought in over Turkana, unconditional cash grants half a century’, exposing have become an important element in responding to both slow and more than 3.5 million rapid onset emergencies in recent Kenyans and 500,000 times. As well as their flexibility, unconditional grants also allow refugees to starvation. Kenya: For Turkana pastoralists struggling with drought, mobile finance offers a lifeline mobile finance offers struggling with drought, pastoralists Turkana For Kenya: In partnership with Safaricom This was best exemplified during telecommunications, the Kenya Red the Turkana food crisis of 2011. In Cross Society is one of the many an innovative joint campaign led by humanitarian aid organizations that has Safaricom Foundation, Kenya Red successfully adopted and mainstreamed Cross Society, Kenya Commercial the use of mobile technologies to transfer Bank and Gina Din Corporate unconditional grants in emergency Communications, over 700 million situations. The charity, which is widely Kenyan Shillings (approximately accepted as a first responder in US$6.5 million) was raised in cash humanitarian crises, reported in 2017 and a further 300 million Kenyan that it had given a monthly grant Shillings (US$2.8 million) in kind of over 3,000 Kenyan Shillings to for the drought-affected Turkana more than 41,000 drought-affected communities. The campaign, which families (nearly 250,000 people) over was branded ‘Kenyans for Kenya’ a period of three months through (K4K), used M-PESA and social the M-PESA mobile platform. media platforms to raise funds by attracting individual donors to The digital transfer facility is user aggregate their contributions towards friendly, fast and affordable, and the emergency response in Turkana. does not require relief aid recipients The K4K campaign subsequently to hold a bank account: eligible won Kenya’s top award in the Not community members only need for Profit Campaign of the Year. to register their M-PESA phone numbers with the Kenya Red Cross For Turkana pastoralists, who face Society. Once the charity has sent a long history of discrimination, the grants into the ‘mobile wallets’ of inter-ethnic violence and further eligible beneficiaries, the recipients challenges related to the burgeoning can make digital payments for oil industry in the region, a lasting goods and services or they can solution to the social and environmental withdraw physical cash at the nearest pressures on their traditional licensed M-PESA agent — the other culture and livelihoods will need component within the transfer cycle. to extend beyond the immediate response to droughts, conflicts and For humanitarian agencies as well as other humanitarian emergencies. disaster-prone communities living in Nevertheless, given the serious hard-to-reach locations, the transfer threat of famine and displacement of grants via mobile technology has associated with these crises, mobile been a game changer in responding to technologies offer a vital lifeline to emergency situations such as droughts. these communities when they need What is striking is that this has been it most — and, in the longer term, achieved through partnerships the possibility of lasting change. between humanitarian agencies, telecommunication companies and commercial banks — an approach that appears to be increasingly common in the humanitarian sector. 89 Tanzania: For people with albinism, hate speech and discrimination have moved online

Hamimu Masudi

Portrait of Emmanuel Silas Shadrack, a music artist and the first Mr Albinism East Africa. Tanzania: For people with albinism, hate speech and discrimination have moved online speech and discrimination have people with albinism, hate For Tanzania: In Tanzania, being born with albinism is the beginning of a lifetime of discrimination on multiple fronts. Ordinarily, people with albinism are impaired physically because their skin, eyes and hair lack melanin — the pigment that keeps ultraviolet rays from damaging DNA and vision, and potentially causing skin cancer. Moreover, due to negative social attitudes towards people with albinism, their full and effective participation in society is compromised.

According to Standard Voice, a NGO Silas Shadrack is no stranger to based in Tanzania, only half of discrimination. Yet against all the odds, children with albinism complete Emmanuel — who is also a music artist and just 1 in 10 known by the stage name Mr Tiger — transition to . has risen from obscurity to become a well-known figure in Tanzania, In the worst case scenario, people following his inauguration as the first with albinism may even be at risk of Mr Albinism East Africa in December human sacrifice. This grisly practice, 2018. ‘After an intense competition, all rooted in widespread superstitions the way from my home town of Geita that the body parts of people with in north-western Tanzania to Nairobi, albinism have magical powers, is Kenya, I was declared Mr Albinism East thought to have claimed nearly 80 Africa,’ he recalls. ‘I was overwhelmed people’s lives since 2000, with many and I remember returning back home, others subjected to violent attacks. and at the border crossing with Kenya, The majority of victims are children. I received special attention — that is According to the United Nations, ritual unaccustomed to people with albinism, attacks against the community have like myself. On this occasion, my been fuelled by fortune seekers, with status had raised, after the whole world victims kidnapped and their bodies watched me on TV and social media.’ dismembered by hired killers. After an upsurge in murders, the government As a result of his win, Emmanuel saw of Tanzania weighed in to avert the a surge in the number of followers and terrible impact of such superstitions likes on his social media accounts. and banned witch doctors, the ‘During the contest I received a lot suspected culprits. However, of positive comments [on social people with albinism continue to media accounts] wishing me good live in fear and suffer deep-seated luck. And this increased several prejudice throughout their lives. fold after I won the contest. I had Born in 1998 with albinism, Emmanuel to show gratitude and took time to 91 respond to each and every comment, situation and subjected me to severe thanking my fans for the support, punishments every time I arrived as much as I could’, he added. late for classes. Eventually, with consent from my dad, I abandoned The youngest of a family of five, my education and stayed under the Emmanuel’s mother passed away safety of my home and family.’ early in his life, and together with his other siblings he was raised by his In addition to cracking down on the father. As a child with albinism, the killings, the government of Tanzania has challenges he faced were considerable. built schools and protection shelters In 2008, for instance, his father had for children with albinism in hotspot to make the difficult decision to move zones. However, Emmanuel does not house to a safer neighbourhood after think people with albinism are out of he survived an abduction attempt. danger yet. ‘We have been thrown a lifeline, but as long as the prejudice, ‘It was tough for me, because I grew up stigma and discrimination carry on, during the time people with albinism it will count for nothing. We still feel, were being hunted for the trade in our under the cover of darkness, we can body parts. I was in class three when get hurt because the social attitudes the issue became widespread and I that fuelled the first wave of abductions could see that my own community was are still in place. After years of neglect keeping a distance from me. No one and being regarded as wicked, we are wanted to be seen closer to me at any still traumatized. The general public and time because they didn’t wish to be a great number among us [the people suspects or witnesses, in case I was with albinism community] are still abducted. They would hold community ignorant of albinism and that explains meetings over me and put pressure on why the majority are not in school; my dad to remove me from the locality or hand me in to police for protection. It was about their safety, not mine.’

His account of the different issues he faced as a student highlights why so many children with albinism are forced to leave school at an early age. ‘Attending school was another According to Standard challenge, due to the long distance Voice, a NGO based in between home and school. I always arrived late for classes since, unlike Tanzania, only half of the other school-going children, children with albinism I couldn’t leave home for school until it was 6.30 a.m., in the safety of broad complete primary daylight. There was a lot of bullying education and just and name calling in school, plus there were no viewing aids to support 1 in 10 transition to my poor vision. The school teachers secondary school. were equally not understanding of my Tanzania: For people with albinism, hate speech and discrimination have moved online speech and discrimination have people with albinism, hate For Tanzania: why sun screens and viewing aids are As people with albinism are still not available to people with albinism; regularly targeted with hate speech, and why skin cancer continues to their main recourse is to attempt to eat up people with albinism. We are block perpetrators on an individual still being called “ghosts” and all basis or conceal their identity. sorts of degrading remarks on the ‘As a coping mechanism, you can streets and in our communities.’ delete the entire post that has received a cruel comment and post afresh, or Although digital platforms and mobile if it’s a sustained attack, you block the technologies have grown exponentially account. Other times, for fear of being in Africa, thereby stretching further targeted, people with albinism will the limits of human interactions, simply not use photos of themselves this is not necessarily the case for on social media. Instead photos of people with albinism. According to objects like vehicles, mountains, Emmanuel, the abuse, name calling memes or animals will be used. That and stalking that people with albinism way you remain anonymous and won’t experience on the streets has gone attract the attention of hateful people.’ online too, unabated. Given the fact that cyber- monitoring is Emmanuel argues that the situation yet to be mainstreamed as a way of of people with albinism in Tanzania identifying and reporting the existence will only begin to change once the and scale of the problem, Emmanuel’s long-standing myths around albinism experience is no doubt common. are successfully dismantled, a caring environment is created and equal As an albinism ambassador, he spends opportunities are extended to all. a lot of time online. He reveals that, As a music artist, he wants to see although it is difficult to determine how people with albinism making it in prevalent it is, online abuse targeting the music industry — not on the people with albinism is persistent. basis of singing about albinism but ‘I am very fortunate that I have come on conventional issues such as this far in life and to be appointed Mr relationships, love and conscience. Albinism East Africa, [that] exposed That, he believes, will boost the me and built my confidence to self-esteem of people with albinism engage on all platforms and earn and the public perception of them will the respect of the public. But not all change, too. To this end, Emmanuel people with albinism are as lucky. We dreams of starting a music group still go through a lot of stereotypical of East African artists he competed and veiled attacks on a daily basis, with at the regional Mr and Ms whether on or offline. Because Albinism contest in Nairobi. people with albinism [are] a deprived group, we rarely engage online but when we do, we are “greeted” by the same offline debasing remarks.’ 93 Africa: Americas 95

In the Americas, beginning with the first colonial invasion, technology has all too often been a tool of oppression used to subjugate, exclude or exploit minorities and indigenous peoples. At the same time, a wealth of knowledge and innovation developed over millennia has been denigrated and destroyed, ranging from unique artworks and highly developed cities to traditional medicines and environmental stewardship.

Only now, belatedly, is the value of these approaches with regard to contemporary challenges such as deforestation, climate change and public health being more widely recognized. In the meantime, in resource-rich areas such as the Amazon, communities still struggle with the threat of mining, logging and newer forms of development, such as hydroelectric dams — projects justified for their production of ‘clean’ energy, yet often imposed on indigenous inhabitants without their free, prior or informed consent.

These issues are equally evident in North America where, despite greater affluence, both Canada and the United States (US) have disenfranchised minorities and indigenous peoples who are protesting the development of gas and oil pipelines on their lands. In the cities, too, different forces of discrimination are at play as entrenched patterns of racial discrimination continue to segregate ethnic minorities into poorer, under-serviced urban neighbourhoods. In San Francisco, this process has been accelerated by the booming tech industry: inequitable growth has pushed up the cost of housing drastically, while leaving many minority residents no better off due to limited employment opportunities in this sector.

For migrants from Central America, new technologies bring challenges but also opportunities. Those making the long journey north now contend with new threats: for instance, smartphones place them at greater risk of surveillance and interception from both organized criminal groups and migration officials in Mexico and the US. On the other hand, they also provide them with greater opportunities to keep in contact with families in their home countries, communicate with other migrants and gather information about their journey. These positive examples illustrate the possibility of a more inclusive future where technologies empower rather than exclude minorities, indigenous peoples and migrants. In Ecuador, for example, indigenous activists used social media to organize anti-government protests in October 2019 and more recently have employed these platforms to disseminate information on Covid-19 in local languages. Americas: Introduction Central America: For migrants crossing national borders or connecting across ‘the wall’, communication technologies play a vital role

Michele F. Ferris Dobles

Luis, from , speaks to his daughters who are in the USA, from where he was deported. Arriaga, Mexico. Credit: Markel Redondo/Voces Mesoamerica 97

Migration is part of the history of humankind: movement has always been a crucial factor in human survival. Although global migratory processes are not new, the world has entered an unprecedented period of human mobility, with the total number of international migrants reaching over 272 million in 2019 – around 3.5 per cent of the world’s population, the highest number of international migrants ever recorded. Although different economic, political and social factors have played a role in this development, one element that is transforming migration at all levels is the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs).

Central America, a narrow isthmus Despite the fact that Central located between continental North Americans are fleeing extreme America and South America, is situations of violence, they are still composed of seven countries: Belize, considered ‘economic migrants’ by Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Mexican and US governments: , and Panama. this means they are categorized as A particularity of this region is that it migrating for economic purposes presents very dense migratory flows and not for survival, which makes it – in fact, it is the largest migratory extremely difficult for them to apply corridor in the world – with many for asylum and refugee status. heading to the US: some 3.5 million This situation leaves them highly Central American immigrants are vulnerable as, without legal resources now estimated to be residing in or protection, they are targeted by both the country. Large-scale migration authorities and criminal organizations. began in the region in the 1970s In this context ICTs take on a particular and 1980s, during a period of significance, enabling migrants to widespread political uprisings and exchange messages and receive vital civil wars, continuing into the information as a means of avoiding and 2000s as a result of violence and deportation and other dangerous structural problems, including limited situations. In addition, given their very access to public services such as limited opportunities for securing education, high unemployment and refugee status or residency in the poverty. Central America also has US, Central American immigrants some of the highest murder rates are not in a position to visit their and number of gangs in the world, home countries – a condition that as well as deep social inequality makes mediated relations and and corruption, crucial factors that communication through technology deepen and drive essential for fostering family bonds people’s decision to migrate. across space and national borders. Central America: For migrants crossing national borders or connecting across ‘the wall’, communication technologies play a vital role play communication technologies ‘the wall’, connecting across or national borders migrants crossing Central America: For At every stage of the migration communicate, interact and organize process, from the journey itself across national borders. This situation, to the everyday difficulties of life while bringing many benefits for people as an undocumented immigrant, on the move, has also created greater technologies play a central role. For demands and expectations within migrants themselves, the benefits and migrant networks, at times provoking challenges go hand in hand, offering feelings of stress and anxiety around valuable sources of information and the need to be constantly available social support while also putting them through these technologies. In this at even greater risk of surveillance, manner, faster and more frequent deportation and criminal violence. connectivity does not necessarily make transnational migration an Surviving the journey easier or less painful experience. It is crucial to remain critical about The social and collective organization the effects of ICTs, as the challenges of transnational migration has changed of separation that many migrants profoundly with the advance of ICTs. face are not automatically alleviated One of the most striking and widely by smartphones and social media. publicized instances of this is las caravanas migrantes, the so-called Another important change that ICTs ‘migrant caravans’ that dominated have brought to the traditional patterns headlines in US media in 2018 and and trends of migration is how they were frequently invoked by President can shape, in real time, the migratory Donald Trump as a national security journey itself. Smartphones are locative threat. Comprising thousands of men, and portable media: this means that, women and children from Nicaragua, besides enabling connectivity and Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, communication with friends and family, the caravans primarily relied on mobile they are useful tools for navigation and phones and applications such as information sharing during transit. This WhatsApp to enable migrants making has meant that established migration the long journey across Central pathways have now been redirected America to the US to achieve safety in to follow paths of connectivity, with numbers and avoid the depredations migrants favouring travel through areas of criminal gangs along the way. The where they can access an internet caravans also served as a means to connection. In the process, every aspect highlight the reality of families and of their journey has been transformed, communities displaced by protracted from the physical routes they take to violence in their countries of origin: the ways they spend their money. though grossly misrepresented by certain media outlets and vilified by Through their smartphones, migrants right-wing politicians within the US, they have never had so much information nevertheless succeeded in attracting at their fingertips, but at the same time global coverage and increasing they have never been so exposed to international awareness of their plight. so much surveillance. In this regard, it is important to recognize that More generally, ICTs have amplified having access to a mobile phone and and intensified the ways people connectivity does not necessarily make 99 the migrant journey easier, particularly as Life in the US as an others have also been quick to exploit undocumented migrant these technologies for their own gain. For Central American migrants making Even once they have reached the US, the hazardous journey through Mexican Central American migrants continue territory, the threat of kidnapping and to face profound challenges on a daily torture by organized criminal gangs is basis. Without documentation, their exacerbated by the collusion of corrupt lives are frequently characterized by police officials: when apprehended insecurity, isolation and the constant by gangs or the authorities, migrants threat of deportation. Within this are frequently asked to hand over their context, smartphones and social media mobile phone in order to call family have become important tools to cope members in Central America, who with the difficulties of family separation, Two migrants are then coerced into sending money discrimination and persecution. check a map to secure their loved one’s release. at a migrant For migrants in the US, thousands shelter in Arriaga, Thus, while providing many benefits, of miles from their loved ones and . It is mobile phones also pose new dangers with little prospect of seeing them estimated that for migrants. Once in the US too, these in the foreseeable future, the mobile half a million migrants from technologies can prove double-edged phone has become a crucial device Central America — offering a vital line of contact to the for maintaining affective bonds cross Mexico families and friends in their countries of across ‘the wall’ and national borders, each year. Arriaga, Mexico. origin, but at the same time increasingly a ‘virtual proximity’ that enables them to Credit: Markel co-opted by migration agencies as a remain connected with their countries Redondo/Voces tool of coercion. of origin. Through the use of ICTs, Mesoamerica Central America: For migrants crossing national borders or connecting across ‘the wall’, communication technologies play a vital role play communication technologies ‘the wall’, connecting across or national borders migrants crossing Central America: For migrants create their own meanings under the Department of Homeland that go beyond those designed by Security (DHS), are reportedly now the developers of the technology, and using this data to locate and arrest that instead are created by their own undocumented migrants in the US. needs, expectations and perceptions. This is far from being an isolated case: the data mining company Palantir’s In the past, to remain connected, ‘Investigative Case Management’ (ICM) migrants and their family members in system has reportedly been used by their countries of origin had to wait a ICE to track down, incarcerate and long time to receive a letter in the mail deport migrants, with activists accusing or coordinate international phone calls Palantir and other corporations which that might happen once a month – have supported its operations, including both time-consuming and expensive Amazon which hosts the ICM system options. ICTs now allow transnational on the servers of its Web Services communication and social interactions division, of being complicit in the to be part of ‘everyday’ life, transforming mistreatment of migrants in the US. the nature of the migrant transnational networks and their connections with ICTs and migration: their families. Migrant families and a mixed picture for migrants networks have never had so many possibilities within their interpersonal Whether making the perilous journey relationships for interaction and sharing. across Mexico or living in the shadow of surveillance in the US, technologies Yet while migrants use technology are both a blessing and a threat. Every to foster and strengthen their undocumented migrant must reconcile transnational networks and as devices these tensions and contradictions. for safety, information sharing and The smartphone, for instance, can communication, government agencies provide safety, information and and corporations have exploited ICTs emotional support while simultaneously for their securitization of the migration provoking feelings of pain, guilt agenda. Indeed, the US government and frustration. It also brings new has invested millions of dollars in law dangers and forms of exploitation. enforcement, migrant prisons, tracking The study of the interconnections technologies and deportation facilities. between ICTs and migration should In early 2020, for example, it was recognize these complexities, as they reported that the Trump administration are intertwined in the experiences of had purchased data relating to millions thousands of people migrating from of smartphone users from Venntel Inc. Central America and elsewhere. specifically for immigration enforcement purposes. Having acquired this data, As with so many aspects of the federal agencies can access personal migration experience, there are no information collected through everyday easy answers. While violence and use of smartphone apps in order insecurity in Central America persist, to track undocumented migrants. migrants will continue to make the The Immigration and Customs difficult journey to the US – and ICTs, Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and whether as their ally or enemy, will Border Protection (CBP), two divisions be with them every step of the way. 101 Ecuador: Indigenous activists are finding ways to use technology to secure their rights – but barriers remain

Gilda Paulina Palacios Herrera

Like many countries across Latin America, Ecuador is still struggling with the legacy of colonialism and the marginalization of its indigenous population. For decades, indigenous Ecuadorians have mobilized against the country’s entrenched hierarchies and inequalities, with considerable success. One of the most significant milestones was the drafting of a new national Constitution in 2008, approved by referendum, that explicitly recognized the collective rights of its indigenous peoples, as well as its long-excluded Afro-descendant community.

Indigenous people react during protests against Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno’s austerity measures in Quito, Ecuador. Credit: REUTERS/Henry Romero Ecuador: Indigenous activists are finding ways to use technology to secure their rights – but barriers remain barriers rights – but their to secure technology to use finding ways Indigenous activists are Ecuador: Among other provisions, it acknowledged have been typecast as being ‘anti- their unique identities, land ownership development’ – a common trope that and their right to live free from racism, seeks to frame indigenous resistance as well as the state’s commitment to as a movement against technological ‘uphold, protect and develop collective progress. At times, international knowledge’, including ‘their science, supporters of threatened communities technologies and ancestral wisdom’. This may unwittingly use the same last formulation is particularly striking, dichotomy by contrasting indigenous given the tendency for governments traditions with the destructive impacts across the world to disregard traditional of corporations uprooting ecosystems knowledge systems or, at best, see them for rare metals and fossil fuels. through a folkloric lens – rather than accept them as living, contemporary While it is true that communities worldviews with urgent relevance to many draw on long-standing knowledge of today’s most pressing challenges. and practices around environmental stewardship, indigenous perspectives Despite the apparent progress signified in Ecuador and elsewhere are not in the 2008 Constitution, Ecuador’s static and continue to evolve. This indigenous peoples – numbering some is demonstrated by the use of new 1.1 million from a total of 14 distinct information and communication communities – are still struggling technologies (ICTs) by many to secure these basic rights and indigenous Ecuadorians, despite freedoms. Their continued exclusion is significant inequities in access, reflected in the fact that almost two- including in human rights activism thirds of indigenous Ecuadorians are and community mobilization. This living in poverty – a proportion that was evident in October 2019 during is three times higher than the level widespread demonstrations against among their counterparts. a package of austerity measures This deprivation is in large part rooted proposed by the Ecuadorian in the dispossession of their most government. Led by indigenous precious resource, their ancestral lands, protesters, the demonstrations and with it the rich biodiversity that for eventually pressured the government centuries has sustained their cultures, to abandon its planned rollback of livelihoods and spiritual values. public services. Their success was due in part to the effective use of The latest chapter in this saga of social media, such as documenting exploitation and discrimination is the incidents of violence by soldiers threat posed by Ecuador’s growing against civilians during the unrest. mining sector as companies, with the support of the state, have encroached It is true that new technologies, including on indigenous peoples’ communal the internet, can pose a threat of territory to extract oil, copper, silver, gold as individual languages and other natural resources. In opposing and cultures are side-lined by globalized these activities and their devastating media and entertainment. Nevertheless, impacts on health, food security Ecuador’s indigenous organizations and the environment, indigenous have found ways to repurpose these activists have complained that they technologies to overcome such 103 barriers. For example, in response to such as people with disabilities, the lack of widely available information who experience multiple forms of on the Covid-19 pandemic for non- discrimination: the proportion of those Spanish speakers, the Confederation with disabilities among the indigenous of Indigenous in Ecuador population is significantly higher than (CONAIE) has been translating advice among the non-indigenous population. from the World Health Organization and disseminating it to communities Some commentators have expressed using the hashtags #WasipiSakiri and concern that, if unequal access to #JeminPujusta, translating to ‘Stay at ICTs among indigenous Ecuadorians home’ in Kichwa and Shuar respectively. persists, then their power to drive social change may in the future diminish. After While celebrating these activities, everything that has been achieved in however, it is important to acknowledge the last few decades, this would be the fact that the inequalities that disastrous. What we must do now is indigenous Ecuadorians experience focus our efforts on improving access in other areas of their lives are also for all Ecuadorians to ICTs, but with reflected in their access to new a particular focus on ensuring that technologies such as laptops and the disproportionate gaps experienced smartphones. Affordability remains by indigenous peoples, those with a critical issue for many poorer citizens, disabilities and other marginalized including a significant proportion of groups are eliminated. This, more indigenous people, a situation reinforced than anything, would demonstrate by their educational exclusion. These real progress – an approach where disparities are especially stark for certain technological development and groups within the indigenous population, social inclusion go hand in hand.

Indigenous women stand outside next to a wall in Chimborazo, Ecuador. Credit: Stephen Reich Ecuador: Indigenous activists are finding ways to use technology to secure their rights – but barriers remain barriers rights – but their to secure technology to use finding ways Indigenous activists are Ecuador: United States: Equitable smart city design in San Francisco

Mariah Grant

Since the late 1800s, California’s northern coast has established itself as a hub of technological innovation, from the early days of aerospace to the present-day computer industry. From Apple and Google in the 1980s and 1990s, followed by Facebook and Uber since the turn of the millennium, many computer and tech industry leaders founded their businesses and maintain their headquarters in the area.

The clustering of these companies solar rebate programme in the region, has had a significant impact on the and increased reliance on public Bay Area, which includes the urban transportation along with a transition centres of San José and San Francisco to autonomous vehicles. The city and to the south and north, along with wider region have become known Berkeley and Oakland in the east. for concentrating on innovation and technology to problem solve. San Francisco, in proximity to Silicon In many ways, San Francisco has Valley and the tech-related funding taken to heart the common tech that comes with it, has been a focal industry refrain, ‘Move fast and break point for testing new technologies things’, originally popularized by at the cutting edge of smart city Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg. design. As part of this effort, the city has implemented a wide range of Yet while San Francisco has been projects to address issues such as lauded as a pioneer in the move waste management, established towards smart city development, various ‘green policies’, including the limitations of this approach to bans on plastic bags and the first resolve deep-seated social problems 105

Louis, a 51-year-old resident of a single-room-occupancy apartment, sits by a street amid an outbreak of Covid-19 in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton are increasingly coming into focus. meeting people who are unhoused Indeed, the drive for greater liveability, and the civil society groups working efficiency and convenience has left alongside them. Alston witnessed many of the city’s most marginalized how cities like San Francisco are residents far behind. One of the pioneering a technology called starkest examples of this is the Coordinated Entry System (CES), ever-widening wealth gap in the city, which uses surveys conducted by most visible in the growing number caseworkers or volunteers to collect of individuals living on the streets. data and then computer algorithms For years, human rights groups have to match unhoused people with sounded the alarm at the deplorable available services. Following his visit, conditions in which unhoused the Special Rapporteur noted that individuals have been forced to live. in San Francisco, ‘many homeless individuals feel deeply ambivalent In 2017, the UN Special Rapporteur about the millions of dollars that are on extreme poverty and human being spent on new technology to rights, Philip Alston, toured the United funnel them to housing that does not States (US), including San Francisco, exist’. Innovations such as CES do United States: Equitable smart city design in San Francisco smart city design in Equitable States: United not get to the heart of the problem, need of permanent housing, because namely the chronic shortage of the accommodation is not intended affordable housing. A further issue for them. This is not the case with San with CES surveys is that they typically Francisco’s CES, thereby excluding the ask very intimate questions. In Los majority of homeless families. There is Angeles, for instance, the surveys ask a stark ethnic dimension to this too: whether the person being interviewed 62 per cent of the city’s SRO families has engaged in sex work, forcing are immigrants. Not surprisingly then, in unhoused people to feel as if they 2018 the Special Rapporteur released must abandon their right to privacy in a report that called the conditions in order to gain their . which unhoused individuals in the Bay Area live ‘cruel and inhuman’, An issue specific to the San with many denied basic needs such Francisco CES is that families living as water, sanitation and health care. in overcrowded accommodation in so-called Single Room Occupancy For Carla Mays, an analyst and planner hotels (SROs) are downgraded to low in smart infrastructure and hazard priority by the system’s algorithms, mitigation as well as co-founder of despite the fact that families with #SmartCohort, a global ‘do-tank’ children are crammed into typically helping to design and build smart 2.5 m × 2.5 m rooms originally built for and resilient cities for all, the current single adult residents. Forty per cent ‘dystopia’ being realized in San of the rooms in San Francisco’s SROs Francisco is not just a consequence house four or more people. According of moving too quickly into the future. to US federal government guidelines, It is also the result of an approach that families living with children in SROs leaves the injustices and systemic are still considered homeless and in racism of the past and present unaddressed. Born in California, Mays grew up near Los Angeles, but has called the Bay Area, and frequently San Francisco, home for the past two decades. During this period, she has witnessed first-hand the transformation of the region and in recent years has been advising on ways to promote more sustainable, equitable smart city design. In San Francisco, 62 per As part of this work, Mays has cent of families that live travelled throughout the US and the in overcrowded Single world, learning from other communities and cultures about how smart cities Room Occupancy hotels and the technologies they engage (SROs) are immigrants - can be implemented thoughtfully to limit, instead of exacerbate, inequity. a stark ethnic dimension. For instance, she looks to Singapore as a guide to being a multicultural 107 society where the government has ‘We are not with clean integrated smart city design in a way that engages residents’ differing hands and we like to look needs, from its housing schemes to around and look at [what] public transportation. Mays notes how, in big and small ways, Singapore finds other people [are doing tech-based solutions that are yet to be wrong], but our country seen in San Francisco. For example, within the Chinese communities of is built on slave labour both cities, it is common for older and we’re not exactly residents to travel almost daily to the city’s respective Chinatowns; doing a lot of good Mays explains that ‘in Singapore things right now in tech.’ they had designed the transit system so that these seniors could Carla Mays get around’, while in San Francisco this community-responsive transit infrastructure is lacking. the human rights concerns that must be considered if smart city design is to Throughout the US, and particularly be genuinely inclusive and equitable. in major cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, New York and Washington DC, Mays also observes that in highlighting Mays has witnessed a tendency to the successes of multicultural smart city rely on neoliberal policies that focus design in Singapore, she cannot ignore on the cost-saving possibilities of that country’s own human rights issues, tech innovation over their effects on including infringements of freedom society. She emphasizes how such of expression and the press, as well policies at best ignore and at worst as legally codified discrimination exploit the foundational racism and against LGBTQ+ individuals. But, she sexism in the US. She points to how clarifies, ‘In the US we have a real smart city design in San Francisco finger-pointing problem’, wherein the has not successfully addressed country looks to patrol the human the ongoing social and economic rights record of other countries while impacts of its history of exclusion and simultaneously committing violations discrimination: the impact of slavery both domestically and abroad. As Mays on the African-American community, describes, ‘We are not with clean the genocide and displacement of hands and we like to look around and indigenous communities, specifically look at [what] other people [are doing the native to the land wrong], but our country is built on slave the city occupies, as well as the labour and we’re not exactly doing undervaluing and exploitation of a lot of good things right now in tech’. Asian immigrants like the Chinese who worked on the railways and At present, access is not provided in agriculture during the gold rush, equally to the benefits brought by the later targeted under the Chinese tech industry to the Bay Area. Mays Exclusion Act. By bringing up these specifically points to online platforming issues, Mays seeks to shine a light on for San Francisco’s affordable housing United States: Equitable smart city design in San Francisco smart city design in Equitable States: United accumulation of white households is seven times higher than for African- American households and five times higher than for Hispanic households. These economic disparities are even sharper for women from these communities: as of 2018, the median weekly earnings of African-American and Hispanic women were only 65.3 per cent and 61.6 per cent of white men’s median weekly earnings, respectively. In San Francisco, this inequitable distribution of wealth is one factor creating the staggering over-representation of African-American residents among the homeless population: despite making up less than six per cent of the city’s Carla Mays, services and the emphasis on credit population overall, African Americans co-founder of card use over cash to pay public make up 37 per cent of the city’s #SmartCohort, a global transportation fares. She notes that, homeless population. Mays also traces ‘do-tank’ helping increasingly, people need access to a line back to historical factors that to build smart capital and the internet to benefit from purposefully restricted or barred ethnic and resilient cities for all. smart city innovations. Yet more than minority groups from certain labour Credit: JD 100,000 San Francisco residents do markets and formal banking systems. Lasica not subscribe to home internet and almost half of adult housing shelters in In part, her solution is to meaningfully the city do not have wireless internet. rectify the wrongs of the past that As a result, many of the individuals continue to harm people today. the online affordable housing portal She advocates for reparations to is supposed to benefit do not have address the legacy of economic a regular or consistent means to access disenfranchisement created within it. Mays also notes limited efforts to African-American communities as a educate residents on how to use result of slavery and generations of the portal: while some community repression, from over-policing to mass organizations (particularly Russian, incarceration. ‘You have to level the Chinese and Jewish ones) have playing field,’ she says, ‘and the only undertaken outreach and training to way to level the playing field is if you make up for what the city has not give capital and access to capital so provided, fewer African-American people can start a business, they can and Hispanic community-based start a non-profit, they can buy a house.’ organizations have had the resources to provide this specific support. Mays also calls out what she sees as an ineffectual focus on implicit bias There is a broader context of within self-described progressive profound social inequality. Within and politically liberal (and usually the US as a whole, the lifetime wealth majority white) circles. She provides 109 the examples of tech companies ‘You have to level mandating training on implicit bias that does little more than put white the playing field and experience at its core without changing the only way to level the extreme under-representation of women and people of colour in their the playing field is if you workforces. ‘Every liberal’, she says give capital and access wryly, ‘will start a meeting talking about [being on] Ohlone land but they will to capital so people can not give them any capital or .’ start a business, they These examples made her recognize how racism has manifested itself can start a non-profit, differently within San Francisco and they can buy a house.’ other liberal US cities compared to the overt forms she has experienced in Carla Mays the more rural south-eastern part of the country, a region often identified as the epicentre of the country’s racial inequity and tensions. ‘The new Jim Crow is actually much uglier because it feels friendly,’ she says. ‘It’s the Brooklyn, it’s the Oakland, it’s the San Francisco, it’s the Portland type of racism and sexism, and the things that happen are more dangerous in that context because there is a lot of masking [of the racism and sexism] and then it goes into systems which disenfranchise and cause people not to be employed, not to get housing, not to be able to take transit.’

To effectively upend this new form of systemic racism, Mays pushes for greater diversity of representation within corporations, tech companies, universities, non-profits and the In the US, lifetime wealth government. According to her, there accumulation of white can no longer just be ‘a lot of nice talk’ about equity and inclusion. To households is seven times ensure that technology, as it continues higher than for African to enmesh itself in everyday life, does not further entrench systems American households of racism, sexism and exclusion, and five times higher than all members of society should be present in positions of power. for Hispanic households. United States: Equitable smart city design in San Francisco smart city design in Equitable States: United United States: ‘If we continue to place our own individuality at the centre of our existence we will collapse on ourselves’

Alicia Kroemer

A portrait of James Walkingstick, an activist from the Cherokee Nation and board member for LEAD Agency. 111

James Walkingstick is a young activist from the Cherokee Nation, currently working, alongside his social studies at Harvard University, as a board member for LEAD Agency (Local Environmental Action Demanded, Inc.). This group advocates for environmental justice in north-east Oklahoma, focusing on Tar Creek. A legacy of lead and zinc mining, as well as asbestos pollution, has resulted in its designation as one of the first and worst of the country’s ‘superfund sites’ – extremely hazardous areas where clean-up is funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). He shared with Alicia Kroemer the value of Gadugi, a Cherokee word which embodies a vision where multiple generations come together and harness indigenous knowledge to address global issues.

How does LEAD Agency the Tar Creek Superfund Site. It happens apply traditional indigenous to be in a location where over ten reside. The contamination directly knowledge to address current and disproportionately affects Native issues like climate change? Americans. The Cherokee Nation founders of LEAD — Rebecca Jim and Earl Hatley LEAD Agency was founded in 1997 as — wanted to implement their indigenous a response to the Tar Creek Superfund knowledge by working together as Site. This site was the largest lead producer a community to do the clean-up. during the First World War, supplying over half of the bullets used in the war. The The indigenous knowledge that the mine shafts were abandoned shortly after founders strongly pushed was Gadugi, the Second World War and they flooded which is the Cherokee value of coming with water. In the 1980s, water began together as one and working together to seeping out of the shafts and into our accomplish a goal. This value has been local creeks. This water was contaminated with our people for millennia. Our people with cadmium, zinc and lead — all of came together to harvest crops, settle which are highly toxic pollutants. The negotiations and build networks with water subsequently oxidized and turned this value. Even the root of the word, red, which led those living in this area Gadu, means bread — a food item to become ill. We are deeply concerned that requires collaboration to craft. about the health risks associated with water heavily contaminated with lead. Through Gadugi, our agency has been able to reach out and achieve positive LEAD Agency fought against the outcomes for all tribes involved. We have contamination and worked to protect been able to make it a harmonious, citizens and our water source. LEAD collaborative effort. While the site is took up the initiative to get the EPA on Quapaw tribal land, all surrounding involved, bringing in the government tribes are getting involved and helping and various organizations to clean LEAD Agency push the issues to United States: ‘If we continue to place our own individuality at the centre of our existence we will collapse on ourselves’ existence our of the centre own individuality at place our we continue to ‘If States: United contaminated with lead but a person wants to grow vegetables in their garden, As for innovation, the Peoria we raise crops up by one or two feet Tribe has invested nearly above the soil to keep them safe, using mulch and compost as counteragents. US$400,000 in a new medical This is ancient indigenous knowledge centre for Native nurses, along being practically applied. By using this knowledge today, we are able with upwards of US$1 million to combat lead contamination. in scholarships. The Cherokee We are also trying to solve the issue Nation, Modoc Nation and of massive environmental inequality Quapaw Nation all possess on tribal land. A recent study by the EPA found that our traditional prospering herds of bison, plants (arrowroot and duckweed with the hope of nurturing — found along Tar Creek) contain over 7,000 times the safe amount of a growing industry. lead, compared to baseline plants. These plants are consumed only by Native Americans. Our alleyways and the forefront. We are bringing in other playgrounds have been paved with agencies, like the Department of chat. Recent studies have shown Environmental Quality and the EPA. that a third of our Native youth have been diagnosed with lead poisoning. Through the value of Gadugi, we have We know we need to advocate for been able to come together and protect ourselves and our tribal communities. our water, our most sacred relation. The Cherokee people are people of the In terms of technology, creek — we go to the water for ceremony. innovation and access, We use water in our everyday life; clean how can traditional water is vital for our communities. We have taken every action to protect it. indigenous knowledge be To negate pollutants, we have also applied in each category? implemented food sovereignty. The site has created giant piles of toxic chat There are myriad ways we can around Tar Creek — waste produced implement what we know, but I think the from lead mining. These chat piles heart of it is our sovereignty. If we want have spread enormous amounts of to be innovative, create access and use poisonous dust around the area and our technology for a sustainable future, many local crops are affected. This we need to look at our sovereignty means our food sources remain at high first as nations. Our connected tribes risk. We use food sovereignty as a way have been reaching out in new ways of counteracting this. We aim to control to create a better future. With regard what we eat through growing traditional to technology, look at our use of solar indigenous foods that sustain us. We are panels: the Quapaw Nation has been using the methods that we have always building them on tribal land, especially known in our communities. If a yard is around the superfund site. We have 113 already recovered over 800 acres of The Cherokee Nation, Modoc Nation and polluted land by remediating the soil and Quapaw Nation all possess prospering eliminating the presence of toxic chat. herds of bison, with the hope of nurturing We are creating new ways for sustainable a growing industry. We are all working energy for the tribe. The Cherokee Nation together. While the value of Gadugi uses hydroelectric power with the world’s is a Cherokee value — it connects all longest multi-arched dam. Through tribes and nations. We are carrying the Pensacola Dam we can provide that same value by different names. tribal citizens with hydroelectric power The sovereignty that we use can push us and fight our reliance on fossil fuels forward, push us away from fossil fuels, to power homes. push everyone into a cleaner future.

LEAD Agency is playing a direct role by Another Cherokee value that we hold advocating for communities upstream is Detsadaligenvdisgesdi, the value of the dam, ensuring we receive clean that we take responsibility for each energy and safe lake levels. We have other. We watch out for one another been pushing toward a future that and highly value the wellbeing of one is combating climate change. As for another. It is not limited to our tribe innovation, the Peoria Tribe has invested or our identity: this is a value which nearly US$400,000 in a new medical is universal, timeless and necessary centre for Native nurses, along with for the survival of humanity. This upwards of US$1 million in scholarships. responsibility is vital for our future

Rebecca Jim, Founder of LEAD Agency sifts through Tar Creek. Credit: Ian Maule, courtesy of Culture Trip (2019) ‘Involving our youth in sustainability and teaching them our values is extremely vital. If we want a clean future, we cannot just focus on ourselves in the moment, we need to focus on how we transmit these values to the next generation – from Elders to youth.’

James Walkingstick

and for addressing inequality. If we This is a problem that we face here in continue to place our own individuality the Cherokee Nation, due to language at the centre of our existence we loss. Our language has been diminished will collapse on ourselves. It is by colonial institutions and because of through Gadugi and caring for our this we have lost many of our values and community that we truly thrive and traditional knowledge. Right now, we survive. You must have that right mind are cultivating a comeback and building and heart to combat inequality. on language preservation programmes. Last year we lost our last monolingual Why is it important that the Cherokee speaker, Mack Vann. next generation of indigenous When we lose our language, we lose youth prioritize transmission our values, and we lose Gadugi. When of knowledge in addressing we teach youth our language, they modern problems? learn the values inherent within our culture — what our people have been Our youth are the future. Within North doing for thousands of years. When our American tribes, we share the value youth step up and reach out they help of the seventh generation (though the community in so many ways. We by many different names). It is an will have a bright future ahead of us if inter-tribal value that we must care the youth know their values and build for the seven generations ahead. on that knowledge, applying it into the It means creating a positive future future. The pathway to a sustainable for your children and your children’s future is rooted in Gadugi, turning children; to create an environment from individuality to the collective. where they can sustain themselves. Even if we feel alone, we are a part Involving our youth in sustainability and of the community of humanity, who teaching them our values is extremely have the privilege of existence on this vital. If we want a clean future, we planet. Let us live through Gadugi cannot just focus on ourselves in the and care for each other — by ensuring moment, we need to focus on how green and sustainable practices are we transmit these values to the next the default global shared value — generation — from Elders to youth. for those who will be living on this planet when we no longer are. 115 Americas: Asia and Oceania 117

In Asia, long-standing inequalities, power imbalances and the continued impact of colonialism have resulted in a situation where advanced technologies and profound marginalization can exist side by side. This situation is often exacerbated by the involvement of global corporations seeking to extract ever more natural resources from the region.

In the Pacific, where poverty remains widespread and indigenous communities struggle with rising sea levels, natural disasters and loss of livelihoods, numerous mining companies are poised to begin mining the deep seabed for nickel, cobalt, manganese and copper – all valuable metals prized for their use in technology industries – in what has been described as ‘the new gold rush’.

The challenges around technology and human rights are especially stark in contexts where minorities or indigenous peoples are actively targeted by their own governments. This is the case in Xinjiang, China, where millions of Uyghur Muslims are subjected to monitoring and surveillance through biometric databanks, facial recognition, DNA testing and CCTV. Privacy concerns are also emerging in different forms across the region. In Pakistan, for instance, activists worry that increased data collection by authorities and telecommunication companies in response to the Covid-19 pandemic could be used to target religious minorities and other groups in future. However, persecution and violence can also be enabled through ‘grassroots’ technologies that are widely available to all. In India, for example, in a wider context of impunity for perpetrators of violence against minorities, the messaging platform WhatsApp is being used by far-right Hindu activists to spread misinformation and incite violence against Muslims, Dalits and other groups.

Minorities and indigenous peoples in Asia are among the most marginalized groups in a region where poverty remains widespread and is often exacerbated by stigma. In this context, the potential benefits of technologies are considerable, but some of those with the greatest needs continue to be overlooked. In Nepal, people with disabilities from minority and indigenous backgrounds face multiple challenges, but are still regularly unable to access appropriate, affordable assistive technologies due to lack of resources and discrimination. Yet, as elsewhere, minorities and indigenous peoples have also been using technologies to support their rights activism: for example, in Cambodia, indigenous Kuy in Prey Lang forest have partnered with non-governmental organizations and researchers to monitor and record illegal logging using smartphones. Asia and Oceania: Introduction Cambodia: Protecting indigenous resources with a community-based monitoring app

Nicole Girard

Cambodia’s forests are being pillaged to feed demand for luxury lumber in Vietnam and China, decimated for , such as rubber plantations, and cleared for mining exploration. Deforestation rates in Cambodia are among the highest in the world: Global Forest Watch estimates that from 2001 to 2018, Cambodia lost 2.17 million hectares of tree cover, equivalent to a decrease of 25 per cent.

Prey Lang forest is the largest Indigenous Kuy, who rely on these remaining lowland evergreen forest forests for their livelihoods, through complex in mainland Southeast collecting resin and other non-timber Asia, comprising 500,000 hectares forest products, as well as their spiritual spanning four provinces in the central and , have been plains of Cambodia, home to an collectively organizing for protection astounding array of endangered of the forest. Formed in 2007, the Prey species and approximately 200,000 Lang Community Network (PLCN) indigenous Kuy people. Despite being brought together concerned community declared a Wildlife Sanctuary by the members and combined efforts to Cambodian government in 2016, protect the forest. One of their main logging in Prey Lang has continued, activities has been forest patrolling, with deforestation rates inside protected whereby groups of community volunteers areas in Cambodia consistently informally track illegal forest activities, as high as those found outside. alerting authorities, damaging cut timber and confiscating logging equipment. 119

Their monitoring efforts, while dedicated and driven, depended on an informal handwritten data collection system that made it hard to produce up-to-date, integrated information on the situation. In 2014, through a partnership between PLCN, faith-based NGOs Danmission and the Peace Bridges Organization, a local environmental rights NGO, Community Peace-Building Network, the University of Copenhagen and local IT company Web Essentials, a community- based monitoring mobile application was developed to address their needs.

The app — known as the Prey Lang App (PLA) — has gone through a series of redesigns through continuing engagement with community monitors, winning four international awards, and in 2019 was rolled out for use in another forest monitoring network, the Preah Rokar Forest Community Network. The PLA has been considered such a success, both by the PLCN and the researchers at the University A man photographs a marked tree in the Prey Lang forest. of Denmark, specifically because Courtesy of Nerea Turreira Garcia. community input was prioritized through a participatory needs assessment types of information: reference data process, starting from its initial design (metadata including time and date, and continuing throughout the multiple GPS coordinates and phone ID), versions that were tested and tweaked primary documentation data (incident through community feedback. documentation with photo and/or audio) and thematic tagging of the logged The app needed to be designed data. The newest version of the PLA to meet the specific needs of local includes tagging for activities (such as users, some of whom were illiterate or instances of illegal logging and hunting), unfamiliar with smartphones, and at resources (forest products used for the same time reduce the lag between cultural or livelihood activities), reporting the collection and publication of content (monitoring interactions with authorities) to ensure a reliable, up-to-date visual and climate (unusual changes in natural and audio database. Through using cycles and local adaptation strategies). the Sapelli Platform, open source The data is then automatically uploaded technology specifically designed for to a centralized online database using users with limited technological literacy, existing cell phone networks, which is the team came up with a forest crime then validated by a data management monitoring app that collected three team at the University of Copenhagen app with a community-based monitoring indigenous resources Cambodia: Protecting Men stack and used to compile monitoring reports. They found that the monitors had timber from a Security features in the PLA are made a total of 10,842 entries related recently felled tree in the Prey relatively new, incorporated as a result to forest resources and illegal logging. Lang forest. of incidents of violence or threats Forty-two per cent (4,560) of these Courtesy of of violence from loggers or local entries were validated by the external Nerea Turreira authorities against PLCN monitors. data managers, yet 46 per cent (4,979) Garcia. ‘The patrollers can report incidents of were excluded because of a technical violence or potential threats that they error, while only 12 per cent (1,303) received, from loggers, authorities or were excluded because of a human other groups’, explains Dimitris Argyriou, error. The main problem contributing one of the project team members. to the technical errors was limited ‘The entries can include information on availability of a mobile network in the date and time of the incident, the the forest, which made it difficult to location, the perpetrator, the people that upload entries with multiple pictures. were present at the incident and more.’ Lack of a reliable mobile network was also cited by forest monitors as a key After the PLCN had used it for two drawback. One of the PLCN patroller years, the University of Copenhagen survey respondents cited in the study team analysed the app’s success and commented: ‘It is not possible to get challenges in its practical application. a signal in my village and I have to 121 travel to Thala Barivat [Stung Treng ecosystems, and technology such as Province] to get a signal strong the PLA is helping to realize that goal. enough to upload my data. Therefore, The monitoring reports produced by my phone memory is often full.’ the PLA are the most extensive source of data on illegal logging in the Prey Other issues cited in the study Lang forest, offering an invaluable include challenges with long-term resource for advocacy and awareness sustainability, including maintenance raising. The app has also proven of phones and software, and the itself to be a cost-effective method reliance on an external team to validate of forest monitoring when compared the digital data which could prove to the use of professional forest expensive. Overwhelmingly, though, rangers. As the indigenous Kuy of Prey the findings were positive, with the Lang continue to struggle to secure study reporting no significant problems official recognition of their collective in terms of the accessibility for the stewardship and land tenure over their community despite its complexity. ancestral forests, the PLA is proving Furthermore, there appeared to be to be a crucial tool to advance that no meaningful differences in the goal, establishing the necessary data proportion of validated entries across collection systems to create an effective gender and age groups, overturning approach to forest management. suspicions that the introduction of information technologies for monitoring would favour younger male users at the expense of other groups.

Besides rolling out the PLA to other community forest monitors in Cambodia, the team continues to strengthen the functionality of the app. ‘We are currently working to incorporate satellite-based information that will make the patrols more efficient’, Argyriou explains. ‘Also, we will try to identify the reasons for forest clearings as well as hot-spot areas for logging. Global Forest Watch We could definitely advance our user experience more and automate estimates that from 2001 the data management web-app but these are secondary targets.’ to 2018, Cambodia

As recognized by MRG and many other lost 2.17 million indigenous and environmental rights hectares of tree cover, organizations, ensuring indigenous rights to land and resources is one equivalent to a decrease of the most successful means to preserve the integrity of natural of 25 per cent. community-based monitoring app with a community-based monitoring indigenous resources Cambodia: Protecting China: International firms are benefiting from Chinese technologies used to persecute Uyghurs and other minorities

Michael Caster

In China, the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) and other high-technology surveillance has fuelled gross human rights violations against ethnic and religious minorities, especially the mainly Muslim Uyghur and Kazakh populations of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Despite growing pressures to hold Chinese firms accountable, many of these technologies have also been developed through investments by and partnerships with foreign entities and academic institutions based in countries with supposedly positive human rights records.

China’s frontline laboratory and Technology Co. and others. Many for surveillance of these entities are either wholly or partially state-owned and at the In November 2019, the United States centre of China’s rapid development (US) Commerce Department blacklisted of surveillance infrastructure. 28 Chinese entities for their role in the ‘implementation of China’s campaign Hikvision, the world’s largest video of repression, mass arbitrary detention, surveillance firm, has many contracts and high-technology surveillance’ in with police in Xinjiang, including Xinjiang. The list of banned firms now security cameras at some of the includes the regional Public Security internment camps where over 1 million Bureau, subordinate government Uyghurs have been forcibly detained, agencies and a number of commercial as well as big data centres and firms, including Hikvision, Dahua drone operations. In fact, since Chen Technology, iFlytek, Yixin Science Quanguo, the architect of these mass 123

Customers shopping at a Huawei store, a Chinese multinational technology company. Shenzhen, China. Credit: SOPA Images Limited / Alamy

surveillance and detention policies, Huawei, the telecommunications giant assumed the role of Xinjiang Party embroiled in numerous legal battles Secretary, a position he had previously with the US over espionage and held in Tibet, Hikvision and Dahua national security concerns, likewise Technology have won more than has extensive government contracts US$1 billion in government contracts with the Public Security Bureau in in the region. Despite this, and even Xinjiang, including the establishment as the US was banning Hikvision of an ‘intelligent security industry’ for its role in human rights abuses, innovation lab. However, Huawei news reports were emerging that has previously misrepresented the the US government had itself been extent of its partnerships with the a repeat customer, with thousands security sector in the region to hide of the cameras produced by these involvement in human rights violations. companies still installed in military This happened, for example, before facilities across the country. the British House of Commons in China: International firms are benefiting from Chinese technologies used to persecute Uyghurs and other minorities Uyghurs and other to persecute technologies used from Chinese benefiting firms are China: International of repression. Machine learning, a driver of AI, thrives on data, and for surveillance technology this is often biometric data such as photographs for facial recognition, or fingerprints, The United Nations (UN) iris scans, voice recordings and DNA Guiding Principles on samples, all of which have been forcibly mass collected from Uyghurs and Business and Human other minorities across Xinjiang and Rights call on businesses elsewhere in China. In this context, Xinjiang has become a laboratory of to prevent and mitigate sorts for the Chinese government: in the actual and potential other words, the mass internment of Uyghurs and other minority groups is human rights abuses both fuelled by the rise in technology associated with their and feeding into its evolution in business practices. an authoritarian feedback loop. The technologies tested on and used against minority populations in Xinjiang June 2019 and, despite these human and across China are also increasingly rights concerns and pressure from its being deployed outside the country. As intelligence allies, in January 2020 the China rushes to be the world leader in British government initially announced AI, for example, it has taken to exporting it would allow Huawei a limited role in its knowledge and tools. According the development of 5G networks in the to Freedom House, out of some 65 United Kingdom (UK). It then reversed countries it surveyed in 2018, 18 were its stance in July 2020, following new exploiting Chinese AI technology to sanctions imposed on Huawei by control and monitor their populations. the US government in May. However, Many, unsurprisingly, are also countries the British change of heart was not with poor human rights records of motivated by Huawei’s involvement in abusing their ethnic and religious Xinjiang, but rather by other diplomatic minority or indigenous populations, and domestic security concerns. Other from Pakistan to . In January Chinese technology firms involved in 2019, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro Xinjiang include Megvii Technology, sent a delegation to China to learn SenseTime and ByteDance, which about surveillance technologies, is the parent company of the and discussed a bill to make facial popular video-sharing app TikTok. recognition surveillance compulsory. Worryingly, the Chinese firm Cloudwalk A November 2019 leak of internal has agreed a deal with the Zimbabwe Communist Party documents, obtained authorities, whereby it will receive by the International Consortium of the biometric data of millions of Investigative Journalists, reveals how Zimbabweans in order to help improve many of these companies are using the recognition of persons with darker big data and AI to perfect new forms skin tones by its AI technologies. This 125

Uyghur women stand outside in their neighborhood in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. Credit: Adam Dean / Panos will strengthen China’s own surveillance Rights call on businesses to prevent technologies, as well as those of other and mitigate the actual and potential governments that are clients of the firm. human rights abuses associated with their business practices, with At the same time, companies and additional international frameworks universities from countries that placing further emphasis on supposedly respect human rights technology and human rights. have contributed to the development of, or made economic investments In May 2019, for example, in some of these technologies. the Organization for Economic This arguably makes them parties Co-operation and Development to human rights violations. (OECD) adopted Recommendations on Artificial Intelligence, citing the Global accomplices: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the US and European which establishes the rights to privacy, firms benefitting from freedom of religion or belief, and human rights abuses prohibits discrimination and arbitrary detention, among others. China, as The United Nations (UN) Guiding an OECD member, however, has not Principles on Business and Human endorsed these recommendations. China: International firms are benefiting from Chinese technologies used to persecute Uyghurs and other minorities Uyghurs and other to persecute technologies used from Chinese benefiting firms are China: International Images from Because of mounting evidence of China. Thermo Fisher is not alone in a study in 2013 actual human rights abuses associated assisting China with DNA sequencing. on 3-D human facial images. with these technologies in Xinjiang, Yale University School of Medicine Credit: BMC and arguably the difficulty of separating Emeritus Professor Kenneth Kidd has Bioinformatics, legitimate technological developments also collaborated with the Chinese sourced from The New York by many Chinese firms from their Ministry of Public Security in Uyghur- Times. potential for abusive applications, targeted genetic research, but claimed it is almost impossible for any such he thought the genetic data had partnerships or investments not to be been sampled with consent. Although in violation of human rights standards. Kidd’s research partnership with the And yet many firms in the US and Chinese government had begun in Europe have done business with these 2010, before mass internment, even Chinese technology entities, profiting a cursory understanding of China’s from what the UN Committee on the abusive policies towards minorities Elimination of Racial Discrimination should have raised red flags concerning has called a ‘no rights zone’. the nature of such collaboration. The German Max Planck Society has In February 2019, -based also supported genetic research in biotechnology firm Thermo Fisher China. Although they are no longer Scientific announced it would end sales involved in this research, the negative of its genetic sequencing equipment in impact has already been done. China, Xinjiang but does not appear to have for its part, has used the genetic stated conclusively whether it will end technology and skills it has developed sales of its products to other areas in in partnership with these groups to 127 experiment with predictive technologies Xinjiang but have denied their culpability, capable of determining from a DNA with one Western Digital spokesperson sample whether someone is a Uyghur, claiming that, while they recognized and even to produce a computer- ‘the gravity of the allegations related to generated map of that person’s face. surveillance in the Xinjiang Province’, the company did not sell its products to At the same time, through companies the Chinese government. This defence like iFlytek, Megvii and SenseTime, is hollow in light of the responsibilities of China has developed advanced these firms under international human AI voice and facial recognition rights frameworks to mitigate actual technologies to monitor and control and potential human rights abuses the Uyghur population. Again, associated with their business practices, such firms have also entered given the impossibility of separating into partnerships with Western the actions of private and state-owned institutions. For instance, in 2018 the firms in the context of China. Massachusetts (MIT) launched research partnerships Similarly, Hewlett Packard owns nearly with iFlytek and SenseTime, both of 50 per cent of New H3C Technologies which have since been blacklisted Co. Ltd, which develops tools for law in the US over human rights enforcement, with a November 2019 concerns. In February 2020, MIT Wall Street Journal report identifying cancelled its partnership with iFlytek, several internment camps in Aksu as but did not say why: although it customers of this technology. But while announced in October 2019 that it a spokesperson for Hewlett Packard was reviewing its partnership with Enterprise confirmed that IT equipment SenseTime, at the time of writing it had been sold to authorities in Xinjiang, appears to still be under review. it attempted to distance itself, noting it

The German technology powerhouse Siemens has a branch office in Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital, and maintains an advanced technology ‘strategic cooperation’ with China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), Hikvision, the world’s a state-owned military contractor which happens to own a significant stake largest video surveillance in Hikvision. CETC is also behind the firm, has contracts with development of a major predictive policing system identified in a May 2019 police in Xinjiang, including report by Human Rights Watch as one security cameras at some of the main systems used for mass surveillance and detention in Xinjiang. of the internment camps where over 1 million The American firms Seagate Technologies and Western Digital Corp Uyghurs have been have sold hard drives to Hikvision and forcibly detained. other surveillance firms operating in China: International firms are benefiting from Chinese technologies used to persecute Uyghurs and other minorities Uyghurs and other to persecute technologies used from Chinese benefiting firms are China: International was not aware of specific transactions What is to be done and would be looking into it. China’s current development and China’s development of abusive use of AI and related surveillance technologies has not only been fuelled technologies, especially in Xinjiang, by partnerships with technology firms not to mention the sale of these and researchers, but also investments technologies or exchange of from Western financial institutions. knowledge that may contribute to In March 2019, the Financial Times abuses elsewhere, violates existing revealed that two major American and evolving international norms and pension funds, the California State standards on technology and human Teachers’ Retirement System and the rights. Foreign enterprises, investment New York State Teachers’ Retirement firms and research institutions in System, owned tens of millions of US the UK, US and elsewhere cannot dollars’ worth of shares in Hikvision. continue to proclaim their ignorance of the abusive applications of these Likewise, other major international technologies in view of the mounting investment firms such as Fidelity evidence of widespread targeting and International, Aberdeen Standard persecution of minority populations Investments and Schroders, as of in China, particularly Xinjiang. Those late 2019 held shares worth more who continue to engage in business than US$800 million in Hikvision or to invest in these companies must and Dahua. Hikvision’s own website, accept their culpability in the human furthermore, lists banks UBS and JP rights violations being carried out Morgan as among the company’s there at this very moment: not only the top 10 shareholders. And a 2017 monitoring and surveillance of whole market research report by Deutsche cities and their Uyghur residents, Bank explicitly listed the likelihood of but the even worse abuses being Dahua Technology securing a ten- carried out unseen in the darkness year government-backed tender of China’s internment camps. – for ‘a safe city project, which includes infrastructure as well as a public video sharing platform’ – as the reason for its ‘buy’ rating.

While these firms may pay lip service to human rights due diligence in selecting their investment portfolios, many major investment firms remain, at the time of writing, shareholders in these companies, despite their being sanctioned by the US government – and in the face of rampant evidence of their technologies being used to carry out gross human rights violations. 129 India: The dissemination of misinformation on WhatsApp is driving vigilante violence against minorities

Shakuntala Banaji and Ram Bhat

Over the last few years, hundreds of people have been killed or injured by vigilante mobs across India. The rapid spread of misinformation (ranging from unintentional deception to deliberate disinformation) via the use of digital media applications such as WhatsApp has played a crucial role in enabling the rise of this violence, including lynchings.

While these incidents have included using funding from WhatsApp random strangers being beaten to we conducted an independent death on the suspicion that they are qualitative study in four large states potential child-kidnappers or organ- of India between November 2018 snatchers, discriminated groups such and August 2019. As part of this as Muslims and Dalits have been study, we interacted with nearly especially targeted, particularly in 300 WhatsApp users from a wide relation to allegations of cow slaughter range of backgrounds: men and – an issue that has increasingly women aged between 18 and been used as a catalyst for attacks 50, in both rural and urban areas, by right-wing Hindu nationalists. from upper and lower castes, and including Hindus, Muslims and Typology of misinformation Adivasis with a variety of political beliefs and occupations. We also In order to better understand how studied more than 1,000 WhatsApp WhatsApp and other social media anonymized messages that were messaging platforms are implicated typically shared in WhatsApp groups. in discriminatory mob violence, India: The dissemination of misinformation on WhatsApp is driving vigilante violence against minorities violence against WhatsApp is driving vigilante on misinformation The dissemination of India: A man holds Based on this review, we and prejudices against minority a placard that developed a typology of violence- populations. They often build on reads ‘stop attacking fuelling misinformation that is negative propaganda featured in minorities’ most commonly received and mainstream outlets, such as anxieties during a protest shared by Indian WhatsApp around population growth among against mob lynching. users. The categories include: poor and minority populations, Kolkata, India. conspiracy theories about the forced Credit: SOPA • Overwhelming content: still and conversion of disenfranchised Images Limited / moving images of incidents from Hindus to , smear Alamy across the world, shared without campaigns aimed at opposition context, each displaying something politicians, and other narratives spectacular — an execution, an aiming to incite hostility towards accident, a child getting beaten particular groups or individuals. up, a natural disaster, fires and so on — to engage users by • Miscellaneous: this includes imparting a sense of shock. This festival-related greetings, videos of content also serves the function of animals, television clips from talent establishing a WhatsApp group as shows and news programmes, a significant channel of information public events, humorous clips unavailable in mainstream broadcast from India and across the world and print media, where graphic (including content imported from violence is generally not shown. other platforms such as YouTube and TikTok) and other material. Though • Nationalism and ethno-religious seemingly innocuous, these snippets bigotry: these messages are function to sustain the impression conspiratorial, drawing on a wide of a constant ‘flow’ of information number of established stereotypes and to build the profile, brand and 131

legitimacy of users who pass on User motivations other kinds of misinformation. A significant section of WhatsApp users • Gendered content: as in many expressed fatigue with the volume other areas, WhatsApp usage in India of WhatsApp messages received in continues to be highly gendered. a single day. They were members of Women across age, religion, class several groups formed on the basis and caste do not have unrestricted of family, friendship, neighbourhood, access to mobile phones, and caste, religion, political party and their use is often closely monitored occupation. Users were part of most of and controlled by their husbands, these networks offline and active online brothers, fathers or other male participation cemented their credibility relatives. Young women who do use and membership in the offline world. social media frequently experience It mattered to users that they be messages threatening them with seen as active, knowing WhatsApp devastating physical and symbolic participants in specific groups. violence, including rape, harassment and the public sharing of personal Some users — particularly those over 25 information to intimidate them — categorized messages on the basis into silence. Frequently, incidents of sender-credibility. Younger users, on of online harassment result in a the other hand, were more sceptical vicious circle, where families and about the accuracy of the messages communities blame the women because of enhanced functional media for attracting these attacks. literacy. If a video message was edited heavily, for instance, they were able to A recurrent trope that has recently spot the places where the video had emerged is reports — usually a short been altered and were suspicious of video or an image with a voiceover its authenticity — although this did not — of child-kidnapping ‘gangs’ or an always lead them to reject the message individual kidnapper allegedly doing or to report it. Most users suspended the rounds in or around a community. their scepticism during politically Since 2017, when the frequency of charged moments such as cross-border these attacks dramatically increased, conflict and general elections, or dozens of people have been lynched regarding news of child-kidnappings. on the suspicion that they are child- During such occasions, users reported kidnappers. Usually, in South Indian that they forwarded messages out of states the ‘stranger’ is described as an assumed sense of civic duty, and being from North India and vice versa. out of loyalty to family or communal More recently, the same misinformation ties that have historic roots. That these is being shared with the putative ties were often caste-based, partisan strangers now being described as and led to the spread of misinformation Rohingya Muslim refugees, thus was less important to them than playing into the government’s strategic displaying adequate nationalist or generation of fear and loathing of communal fervour at a fraught moment. outsiders in the wake of its National Another finding was that, contrary Register of Citizens initiative. to popular belief, users with little India: The dissemination of misinformation on WhatsApp is driving vigilante violence against minorities violence against WhatsApp is driving vigilante on misinformation The dissemination of India: may themselves sympathize with the prejudices the messages express. In one 2019 survey of 12,000 police personnel conducted across 21 Indian states, a third of respondents felt that mob violence by Hindu vigilante groups against Muslims in cases of alleged cow slaughter was ‘natural’, while more than half felt that complaints of gender-based violence were false.

Given the institutional failure of the state and law enforcement agencies to control violence related to misinformation, the central government has proposed that platforms such as WhatsApp allow users to become traceable, in order to identify users who share misinformation so action be taken against them. In effect, the government has proposed that encryption be removed from WhatsApp in the name of law and order: the The cover or no digital and media literacy case is currently being heard by of Indian played a minimal role in the spread the Supreme Court of India. However, magazine ‘India of misinformation. A very small Today’ with the given that far-right and nationalist headline ‘The number would receive and forward groups continue to disseminate Weaponisation misinformation uncritically. However, misinformation with impunity on public of Whatsapp’. it was primarily upper-caste privileged platforms such as Facebook, ending Credit: Nick men, and some women connected Kaiser/dpa/ encryption is unlikely in itself to resolve Alamy to them, with high levels of functional the problem of online incitement. media literacy and class capital, who were involved both in producing this Furthermore, human rights activists content and creating the networks have expressed concern that the to disseminate it to others. government could exploit such a move to monitor and repress Inadequate state response political opponents and dissenters, rather than curb hate speech against The increasing use of media platforms minorities and other marginalized such as WhatsApp to harass citizens groups. For instance, the district- who dissent from the ruling party level administration in different parts agenda and its nationalistic ideology of the country has arbitrarily placed has been enabled by impunity. Not restrictions on WhatsApp usage during only have the police and security sensitive periods. For example, in the forces failed to prevent the spread districts of Kargil and Leh, internet of misinformation but there is also access was restored in December 2019 evidence that a significant portion 133 after a five-month internet shutdown to using WhatsApp to incite anti-Muslim in the erstwhile state of Jammu hatred among its supporters. and Kashmir. With the restoration of internet services, the district Even as the central government has administration has demanded that all weaponized its administrative and administrators of WhatsApp groups military powers against Muslims, are required to register themselves especially in Kashmir, the same with the district administration, with officials have claimed that encryption strict orders that they will be held prevents them from acting against responsible for any content circulated those spreading misinformation. It on these WhatsApp groups. is difficult to believe this argument is made in good faith, given the This has taken place against the lamentable track record of the backdrop of the Bharatiya Janata government and security agencies to Party (BJP) government’s growing tackle hate speech on public social authoritarianism, particularly towards media platforms such as Facebook, Muslims and democratic dissenters. Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. In The erstwhile state of Jammu and spite of repeated complaints by Dalit Kashmir and the state of Uttar activists, feminists, journalists, human Pradesh, both states with large rights activists, students, academics Muslim populations, have faced large- and many others, no action has scale violence and the imposition been taken by those who perpetrate of curfews, internet shutdowns and death threats, sexual harassment police aggression against protesters. and other forms of abuse. Given that In late 2019, the central government both technology companies and law passed the Citizenship Amendment enforcement agencies have failed Act (which came into operation on to act against hate speech on open 10 January 2020), providing citizenship platforms, it is doubtful that the removal to persecuted minorities of different of encryption will result in any action. religions from neighbouring countries except Muslims. In addition, the Towards real change central government has also allocated budgets for undertaking the National Vigilante violence is linked to Population Registry that seeks to specific typologies of misinformation identify ‘valid’ citizens on the basis produced, shared by and targeted of identity documents. There seems against specific social groups, along to be little doubt that the Citizenship the lines of caste, indigeneity, class, Amendment Act, in conjunction with religion, gender, sexuality, language the National Population Register and and ethnicity. This violent social National Register of Citizens, could be structure should be taken as the broad used to label vulnerable Muslims as context in which applications such foreigners or illegal ‘infiltrators’. Facing as WhatsApp are used. WhatsApp popular protest against the Citizenship usage further intensifies this Amendment Act throughout the violence in specific mediated ways. country, the BJP and the larger family of Motivations of users are important Hindutva organizations have resorted since users have diverse ways to India: The dissemination of misinformation on WhatsApp is driving vigilante violence against minorities violence against WhatsApp is driving vigilante on misinformation The dissemination of India: A smartphone justify misinformation that range from understanding of broader socio- shows no suspension of disbelief to civic duty political contexts. Interventions network available under and nationalism. Such ideological such as promoting a stronger the Kashmir articulations are or should be contested media literacy around the politics of communications in order to transform the conditions representation and power, as well blackout. under which social interactions as cross-stakeholder cooperation Credit: Saqib Majeed/ZUMA are imagined and acted upon. to act on hate speech, would be Press important steps towards real change. Unfortunately, mainstream thinking on curbing misinformation has been More details of the research project restricted to purely technical solutions, and its findings are available in such as possibly removing encryption S. Banaji and R. Bhat, WhatsApp and investment in functional media Vigilantes: An Exploration of Citizen literacy. However, misinformation Reception and Circulation of and subsequent vigilante violence WhatsApp Misinformation Linked to need to be curbed through a critical Mob Violence in India, LSE, 2019. 135 Nepal: For persons with disabilities from minority and indigenous communities, the greatest barrier to accessing assistive technologies is discrimination

Pratima Gurung

An indigenous woman with a disability living near forest areas in Nepal. She has been denied basic rights provided by the government because her family is not familiar with government procedures and lacks access to information. Courtesy of Pratima Gurung accessing assistive technologies is discrimination accessing assistive technologies to barrier minority and indigenous communities, the greatest persons with disabilities from Nepal: For Though the estimated 370 million indigenous people worldwide are extraordinarily diverse, spanning some 5,000 languages and cultural groups, they have one unfortunate commonality – a long history of injustice. The difficulties they face range from limited political participation and economic inequality to lack of infrastructure and inappropriate education.

For indigenous persons with disabilities, even when the technology in question however, the challenges are even more is low-cost or guaranteed as a basic acute: in their case, the risks of physical human right, in practice it may be inaccessibility, social stigma and unaffordable or inaccessible for many related issues such as discrimination indigenous persons with disabilities. in employment opportunities are heightened by racism. Furthermore, At an international level, the importance indigenous women with disabilities of information and communications may be confronted with added barriers technologies (ICTs) for indigenous around gender, including not only peoples was only officially recognized in the threat of violence and abuse 2003 in the Geneva Declaration of the from non-indigenous groups but also Global Forum of Indigenous Peoples restrictive roles and expectations and the Information Society. The Global within their own communities. Forum highlighted that ICTs should be used to support and encourage cultural Unsurprisingly, despite the many diversity and to preserve and promote potential benefits that technologies the languages, distinct identities and can bring, the relationship between traditional knowledge of indigenous indigenous persons with disabilities peoples, nations and tribes, and in a and technologies has been manner to determine the best advances complicated by power imbalances, towards these goals. But to this day, stereotypes and limited political the use of ICTs remains low in many will. ‘Technology’ is a broad term indigenous communities and they are and assistive technologies are no not generally viewed as active users. exception, encompassing something For indigenous persons with disabilities, as simple as a white cane to the the problems of paternalism and latest computer software. It can be as negative perceptions about their capacity fundamental as the ability to access to engage with advanced technologies comprehensible information in one’s have been reinforced by similar own language. Yet in all these cases, assumptions with regards to disability. 137

Access to appropriate technologies for accident or debilitating illness they are persons with disabilities, indigenous less likely to recover from its effects. peoples and other marginalized groups can deliver wide ranging benefits, This was especially evident in the wake fostering equality, non-discrimination of the 2015 earthquake that devastated and participation in society. With significant areas of Nepal, with reports new generations of screen reading of indigenous peoples and Dalits being software for those who are blind or sidelined from emergency relief. This visually impaired, improved mobility reflected a broader context of exclusion devices such as wheelchairs for from public life: a survey undertaken physically disabled users and other for the United Nations Development assistive technologies, the potential Programme in its wake found that to transform the lives of the millions of 81 per cent of indigenous persons indigenous persons with disabilities with disabilities and 61.6 per cent of in developing countries is immense. Dalit persons with disabilities stated Yet access to technology continues that they had ‘inadequate or poor’ to be characterized by a growing gap access to public facilities, compared between those who are technology-rich to 42.2 per cent among persons with and those who are technology-poor, disabilities belonging to other ethnic in the process deepening the existing or caste groups. disparities between dominant groups and those belonging to marginalized In Nepal, perhaps the greatest obstacle groups, including indigenous peoples to securing the assistive technologies and persons with disabilities. that could change their lives is deep- seated prejudice. ‘Many persons Barriers for accessing with disabilities from indigenous technology communities, religious groups and

Nepal is no exception to the troubling pattern of exclusion that shapes indigenous and disabled access to technologies at a global level. There are A survey undertaken for the many factors that contribute to the high United Nations Development levels of disability among indigenous Programme found that peoples and other marginalized communities, such as Dalits, living in 81% of indigenous persons rural areas of Nepal. Besides facing with disabilities and an increased exposure to risks such 61.6% of Dalit persons with as environmental degradation, climate change impacts, natural disasters, disabilities stated that they conflict, violence, dangerous working had ‘inadequate or poor’ access conditions and accidents including to public facilities, compared in foreign employment, they also suffer poverty, lower standards of to 42.2% among persons health, inadequate nutrition and a lack with disabilities belonging to of suitable rehabilitation services, other ethnic or caste groups. meaning that in the event of an accessing assistive technologies is discrimination accessing assistive technologies to barrier minority and indigenous communities, the greatest persons with disabilities from Nepal: For minorities experience multiple layers of • Unaffordability: ‘These groups may discrimination based on their identities not be able to afford technologies and social categories,’ says Jamuna because of the high costs, Tamang of the National Indigenous maintenance requirements and lack Disabled Women Association Nepal of training and literacy. The absence (NIDWAN). These occur at every of initiatives to educate people in level, says Tamang, and ‘are direct this regard can be compounded by barriers that impact the daily lives and the limited information technology the social, economic and physical infrastructure available for aspects of indigenous peoples with indigenous peoples in rural areas.’ disabilities.’ Broadly summarized by Tamang, these include: • Culturally inappropriate technologies: ‘If people manage • Lack of access to information: ‘Even to have access to the technology, if there are provisions for receiving they might still not be able to assistive devices for persons with use it properly due to the lack of disabilities, those may not reach a disability, social and cultural indigenous peoples, as the information friendly environment. For example, circulates in urban settings, within the wheelchair provided might networks of a few Organizations not be the right size or according of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) to the needs of the disability, or to which most marginalized environment and cultural friendly. groups may not have access.’ During our home visits, we have noticed wheelchairs used for keeping • Administrative hurdles: ‘The clothes and pots and crutches used procedural requirements may for chasing chickens in the fields.’ represent more barriers since the documentations and forms may not Indigenous peoples and religious or be provided in accessible formats ethnic minorities such as Dalits may and appropriate languages. Forms, also encounter cultural, attitudinal recommendations, information on and structural barriers in accessing rights, procedures for applications, assistive devices or disability services. follow up, time frames and legal After the 2015 earthquake, one of formalities remain challenges for NIDWAN’s members went to ask for individuals from these groups as most assistive devices for her husband. are not familiarized with institutional She was told to write an application and legal structures.’ and submit it to the local government office near her community. When she • Physical distance: ‘Geographical went to the office, she was told to wear remoteness is also an obstacle for a formal dress and speak properly indigenous peoples and persons while demanding those services from with disabilities as travelling to officials. Belonging to an indigenous a headquarters or city and going community she was wearing a lungi, through procedures can take several a form of community attire, and days and is costly.’ was speaking a mix of indigenous Tamang and some Nepali, which was 139 understood. But though the officers services are provided to indigenous could understand her request, she was communities, they are unable to use told to come in proper dress, speak them since most, besides being correctly and denied the services unfamiliar with the technology, do not she needed. After that, she no longer speak mainstream Nepali. Like Yub felt like going to the office again to Raj, many visually impaired persons request any further assistance. belonging to indigenous communities in Nepal are now looking for ways Unfortunately, her story is far from to exploit these technologies, but as an isolated case. Indifference and they remain unavailable in their own poor treatment of indigenous and languages there is a danger that minority communities in Nepal are they will become yet another area of commonplace, though rarely discussed their lives where they are forced to openly. The power dynamics become assimilate to the cultural and linguistic ubiquitous and this applies at all levels, context of the majority population. even in OPDs, with even persons with disabilities from majority groups Opportunities and denying the issues faced by persons ways forward with disabilities from indigenous peoples or minorities. Furthermore, There is currently a dearth of what aids are available are often not information, a lack of documentation suited to the environment in which and limited debate on the role of indigenous communities live. Disability ICTs to ensure the full inclusion of equipment often has an extremely low persons with disabilities belonging durability and is difficult to repair locally, to indigenous peoples or minorities. so most people living in rural areas use Issues of gender have provided assistive devices that are locally made. a conceptual framework, and the Very few homes are accessible for subject of double discrimination has persons with disabilities, which leaves been recognized in the disability them completely dependent on family movement and discourse. However, members. This increases their social, a fully multiple and intersectional lens political and economic marginalization related to caste, ethnicity, geography and limits their access to necessary and class has still to be discussed or and appropriate support and services. applied to different aspects of health, employment, technology and other According to Yub Raj Lama, a visually services. Most available research impaired member of NIDWAN Youth studies and reports do not reflect Group, language availability is another intersectional perspectives. People who significant factor. Having been raised readily have access to ICTs are those in the city, he himself understands who routinely frame any understanding Nepali, the official language of the of their role in society, meaning they country, and therefore is able to determine how it is ultimately perceived. access all of the facilities available. These assistive technologies are only In its 2018 Concluding Observations available in mainstream or majority on Nepal, the UN Committee on the languages, however: even if these Rights of Persons with Disabilities accessing assistive technologies is discrimination accessing assistive technologies to barrier minority and indigenous communities, the greatest persons with disabilities from Nepal: For (CRPD) urged that the government Conclusion ‘strengthen measures, including public procurement, to grant access for all Reframing the narratives of technology persons with disabilities... to information to make it cost effective, geographically and communications technologies, inclusive and culturally accessible, and to low-cost software and assistive as well as increasing literacy and devices.’ The CRPD also emphasized knowledge of technologies at a wider the importance of inclusion to engage level, is crucial if the large numbers in education and livelihood activities, of currently underserved persons with for instance by granting access to disabilities belonging to indigenous affordable mobility aids and assistive peoples and minorities are to be devices, technologies and services reached. This includes ensuring that necessary for the unrestricted technological information can be personal mobility of all persons with explained in terms and language that disabilities, including those living local communities can understand in rural areas, and belonging to to enable them to introduce it into indigenous peoples and minorities. their daily lives. An intersectional Usefully, the CRPD directly addressed understanding of the systemic and issues pertaining to situations of structural barriers faced by indigenous risk and humanitarian emergencies, peoples, persons with disabilities and where the government should adopt other marginalized groups is necessary ‘an accessible communication to deliver truly inclusive health care, strategy (including hotlines, a text employment and other services. With message warning application and this in mind, technology needs to be general manuals in sign language considered in a holistic and culturally and Braille) and a comprehensive appropriate manner to make sure emergency strategy and protocols that no one truly is left behind. for situations of disaster and risk.’ Throughout, the CRPD emphasized the importance of consultation with persons with disabilities through their representative organizations.

These Concluding Observations have opened up avenues and opportunities for both stakeholders to demand and duty bearers to ensure the comprehensive provision of suitable ICTs for all persons with disabilities, including those belonging to minority and indigenous communities. 141 Pacific: For indigenous communities, new seabed mining technologies could begin ‘the biggest land grab in history’

Joshua Cooper

Indigenous peoples in the Pacific have repeatedly mobilized to protect their ocean, rooted in their cosmological relationship with the liquid continent. Now there is a new challenge for those aiming to preserve the Pacific Ocean, with a looming deadline that will determine the fate of the largest and most mysterious habitat on Earth – the deep seabed.

The people and the Pacific are On the frontline of inextricably interconnected to one a new ‘gold rush’ another: it is a symbiotic relationship of sacredness and respect. What Local communities and cultural happens to the land and in this practitioners whose livelihoods case the sea directly impacts the and existence on Earth depend on inhabitants of the Pacific Islands. their relationship to the Pacific have Deep seabed mining will result in organized against the latest wave of social destruction, economic disruption exploitation of their sacred and spiritual devastation. As the in Oceania. They are confronted, Chief of Duke of York Islands in Papua however, by powerful corporate , has put it: ‘When they interests. Around 30 contractors have start mining the seabed they’ll start already acquired exploration licences mining part of me.’ from the UN International Seabed Pacific: For indigenous communities, new seabed mining technologies could begin ‘the biggest land grab in history’ technologies could begin ‘the biggest indigenous communities, new seabed mining Pacific: For Using a larung, a shark caller rattles coconut shells in water to improvise an irritated school of tuna, a sound that sharks notice from many kilometers away. Shark Calling is an ancient fishing tradition deeply rooted in the ancestral wisdom of the Kontu inhabitants. Kontu, New Ireland, . Credit: Claudio SieberCredit:

Authority (ISA) and are eagerly awaiting role in the production of batteries, the decision on a new mining code electronics and other technologies. at the 26th session of the ISA in July 2020. The session has now been Yet their planned extraction collides postponed until later in the year, directly with the cultural belief systems due to the coronavirus pandemic. of the indigenous population, who believe the minerals mined from In most of the contractors’ sights the seabed are constituted by the are the large deposits of rare earths spirits originating from the Pacific and minerals on the seabed of the Ocean. Once again, a pristine Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an immense indigenous sacred space is being and largely uncharted area in the plundered for profit, with little or no North Pacific Ocean teeming with an regard for the human rights of the array of marine life, including many inhabitants and the wider Pacific. unknown species. It’s already being dubbed the new global gold rush, According to Dr Sylvia A. Earle, an though the valuable metals here are oceanographer and marine biologist, nickel, cobalt, manganese and copper ‘The lease areas are enormous — — all materials that play a central Clarion-Clipperton is the size of the 143 According to Dr Sylvia A. Earle, an oceanographer and marine biologist, ‘The lease areas are enormous — Clarion-Clipperton is the size of the United States.’ She describes the proposed leasing of the area for mining as ‘the biggest land grab in history’.

United States.’ She describes the Its ‘nodules’ — the potato-sized lumps proposed leasing of the area for mining of rock lying on the seabed that the as ‘the biggest land grab in history’. mining companies seek to uproot for the minerals and metals they A living universe beneath contain — are themselves vested with the waves meaning. Scientists and indigenous peoples both understand that the deep Commercial extraction by the seabed is alive. In the words of Sylvia contractors has so far been put on Earle, ‘These living rocks are not dead hold pending agreement on the stones — they are living systems.’ mining code. When the ISA votes on whether to grant commercial- A way of life under threat scale exploitation licences to these companies, what will their decision Solwara 1 was operated by Nautilus be based on? Not the views of the Minerals, a Canadian corporation, Pacific peoples themselves, at least in Papua New Guinea and was not directly, as this body still lacks — until the project’s high-profile indigenous representation despite calls collapse in late 2019 — the world’s to include them in decision-making. first commercial deep sea mine Will they factor in the profound spiritual site. It demonstrates the impact that value of this unique seascape to the mining has already had, even at the communities who depend on it? Will exploration stage, for indigenous they recognize that this area remains peoples in the islands of the Pacific. one of the last great enigmas of the natural world, an area that is still less New Ireland’s West Coast communities well known and understood than the have been home to shark callers for moon? Will they acknowledge that at centuries. Armed only with a larung, present it is impossible to predict the a rattle fashioned out of coconut damage that will be wrought on the shells and bamboo, the shark callers ecosystem by these largely untested, connect with various breeds of shark highly invasive mining technologies? who then come to their boat before being caught by hand. This ancient While the mining industry regards fishing tradition, besides providing the Clarion-Clipperton Zone as a an essential source of protein, potential windfall of commodities is deeply rooted in the ancestral waiting to be extracted, indigenous wisdom of the Kontu inhabitants and peoples view it as a living system. their close connection to the sea. Pacific: For indigenous communities, new seabed mining technologies could begin ‘the biggest land grab in history’ technologies could begin ‘the biggest indigenous communities, new seabed mining Pacific: For In recent years, however, while single dive — we may never know exploration by Nautilus Minerals has how much we lose in the process: been under way, the sharks have the countless life forms we never even not returned. The noise from ships discovered before we destroyed them. and large equipment, as well as contamination of the waters where the Looking ahead, the challenges now callers communicate with the sharks, facing the Pacific Ocean are as now threatens this long-established much to do with indigenous rights as practice. For local inhabitants, whose environmental protection. It is evident livelihoods and spiritual beliefs are that environmental impact assessments intertwined with shark-calling culture, are essential before any extraction the effects have been devastating. can be allowed, but these must also take place in line with the recognized Many other indigenous peoples in human rights standards of free, prior the region face the threat of corporate and informed consent as well as the colonialism. From nuclear testing precautionary principle. This should to climate change, the Pacific — also include placing the views and despite the deep-seated traditions knowledge of indigenous peoples of responsible stewardship of its at the heart of this process through communities towards the natural meaningful, equitable representation resources that sustain them — has been in decision-making, particularly in ground zero in the global environmental relation to the new global collapse brought on by excessive now being forged at the United consumerism, unregulated growth and Nations General Assembly (UNGA), profiteering. Yet, though the catastrophe as well as specific decisions at the now playing out in many of the islands ISA on deep sea mineral extraction. is plain to see, foreign companies and governments still plan to aggressively Aside from the negotiations at the mine the seabed for anything they International Seabed Authority, there can find. This may or may not make is another significant process currently their investors richer, but the world will on the global docket regarding undoubtedly be poorer as a result. protection of our oceans. Since 2018, an Intergovernmental Conference Conclusion convened by the UNGA has been negotiating a binding instrument to Is it easier to bulldoze than to build govern Marine Biodiversity of Areas a culture of respect for nature? What Beyond National (BBNJ). has happened in Papua New Guinea is The Intergovernmental Conference had scheduled for major parts of the Pacific been intending to meet in March–April Ocean, with large machines to be 2020 for a fourth and final round of lowered to the seabed floor to excavate negotiations on the 350-page text the rare minerals and metals there. covering the seas beyond the national Since so much of its extraordinary jurisdiction of coastal states; however, variety of marine life is still unrecorded the session was postponed on account — scientists working there note that of Covid-19. Governments are hoping many new species are found on every that the delay may give them time to 145 agree on a number of disputed topics, But there are other forms of technology including benefit-sharing between besides the extractive equipment of the private sector and coastal states. the mining corporations, including Most crucially though, it is vital that the unique knowledge systems of the the principles of the UN Declaration Pacific, that offer an alternative vision on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of progress rooted in sustainable inform this global dialogue, with environmental management, conscious a long-term moratorium on seabed consumption and circular economy mining in the meantime to allow for approaches. Deep seabed mining, careful and respectful research. on the other hand, would steer global civil society in the wrong direction, The deep seabed is an international undermining the UN’s Sustainable territory that, like Antarctica and Development Goal (SDG) 12 (to the Arctic, should be preserved for ensure sustainable consumption future generations with no military and production patterns) and SDG or commercial activities allowed. 14 (to conserve our oceans while It is also a common heritage of caring for life below water). humanity. Yet, much of what is being proposed is couched in the language ‘We must not take more from the of development and technological ocean but find the balance,’ says innovation. While extractive industries Silvia Earle. ‘Let’s respect the ocean have long desired to excise these for what it gives us — life.’ Though natural resources from the seabed, she is merely echoing what most the refinement of new and more indigenous Pacific islanders would powerful machinery has now tell you, this simple but important given them the means to do so. warning continues to be ignored. Pacific: For indigenous communities, new seabed mining technologies could begin ‘the biggest land grab in history’ technologies could begin ‘the biggest indigenous communities, new seabed mining Pacific: For Pakistan: ‘The virus has turned every facet of life upside down’ – privacy and data protection concerns in the wake of Covid-19

Haroon Baloch

The world is faced with an unprecedented challenge and many argue that every resource we have should be deployed as fast and as fully as possible in order to save lives. Equally, governments are urged to minimize the economic disruption which may cost lives due to poverty and hunger long after the pandemic itself is over.

But members of religious minority In Pakistan, the government has been communities fear that the apparent using Cell Site Location Information ‘carte blanche’ to use all data and (CSLI) and Call Details Record (CDR) every technology in this context may technologies to access the personal lead to serious problems both now data of citizens from their cell phones and long after the pandemic is over. and send out Covid-19 messages. An application has also been developed Covid-19 is turning out to be an and launched, enabled through opportunity for many governments, geotagging services, to send alerts to telecommunications companies and citizens who are entering or resident in social media groups to collect copious vicinities with known cases of Covid-19. amounts of personal data, citing the urgent need to fight the pandemic. Both Just weeks before, social media state and non-state actors have joined companies were meeting with hands to work collaboratively and benefit the authorities to protest a sweeping from personal data as much as they can. new law aiming to control their activities 147

A Sikh devotee waits to take part in a religious ceremony during the Baisakhi festival at Panja Sahib shrine in Hassan Abdal, Pakistan. Credit: REUTERS/Saiyna Bashir

in Pakistan. The new regulations, Citizen Court to disallow the measure: I felt that Protection (Against Online Harm) it would have such a severe impact Rules 2020, give authorities access on the right to privacy and freedom of to their data and fine companies that speech for all citizens of Pakistan, but do not comply. It would also create in particular for the most vulnerable a new post, the national coordinator, groups, including those of minority who would have the power to require faiths, minority sects of Islam and those social media companies to take down of no faith. That case is still pending. or block content within 24 hours. We understood that companies were Just a few weeks later, the virus threatening to withdraw from Pakistan had turned every facet of life upside as they said that they could not function down. Telecommunications and under the new legislation. I was so social media companies have worked worried about the problematic new hand-in-hand with governments in regulations approved by the Cabinet this challenging time to convert the that I petitioned the Islamabad High pandemic into opportunities to further Pakistan: ‘The virus has turned every facet of life upside down’ – privacy and data protection concerns in the wake of Covid-19 of concerns in the wake and data protection – privacy upside down’ life of Pakistan: ‘The virus has turned every facet target the public with advertising. Pakistan, and minority communities Meanwhile governments, aside from do not believe that the state’s data Covid-19, have also been interested processing measures will ensure that in collecting citizens’ data to use it for their data cannot reach those who may their national security-related interests. have supported such attacks in the past. Already in a vulnerable position, The entire stream of massive data any expansion of the government’s collection by governments with powers to collect and use personal the help of telecommunications data in the future could mean that companies and social media giants these communities will feel the is a shady exercise – and entails lots need to retreat further into isolation, of privacy related implications. Aside communicating only amongst their own from the fact that most of the data is members and no longer able to feel being collected without seeking prior part of Pakistan’s society as a whole. informed consent, there are serious concerns about the integrity of data So, whilst the need to use the tools controllers and data processors, data we have to save lives may be correct, retention, security protocols employed this should be done with safeguards by the data controller and processor, and limits, particularly in a context oversight and remedial mechanisms. such as Pakistan where many communities already face the threat From the perspective of religious of being targeted online. If we do not minority communities in Pakistan, consider the long-term implications of the idea that all their data is to be the decisions we make now around made available to the state is terrifying. privacy, security and technology, it Pakistan has openly discriminatory may be much harder to roll back these laws concerning blasphemy and intrusions once the crisis is over. directly discriminates in advertising for low paid workers to be ‘non-Muslim’. This case study is adapted from Restrictions on the operations of a blog originally published on MRG’s NGOs are already very tight. Multiple website in May 2020, Religious serious and violent attacks on minority minorities, privacy and data protection religious communities are common in in the fight against Covid-19. 149 Asia Europe 151

Despite its relative affluence and robust regional human rights mechanisms, Europe still has significant inequalities that are especially evident among its minorities as well as its population of asylum seekers, migrants and refugees. In particular, the European Union (EU) has been widely criticized for its apparent disregard for human rights standards in its efforts to secure its borders, including the use of dubious experimental technologies such as lie detector tests to ‘simplify’ the complex process of migration management.

Nevertheless, the region has been leading the way in terms of protecting the human rights of technology users as well as the wider public. The European Commission’s 2016 Code of Conduct on illegal online hate speech has involved key technology companies agreeing to develop internal procedures and guidelines for removing hate content from their platforms. The EU also took an important step in ensuring digital privacy rights with its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which went into effect in 2018.

At the same time, across Europe, Roma minorities remain acutely marginalized in many countries, and without access to the necessary resources, training and support, technologies can serve as further barriers to securing their rights. In Bulgaria, where Roma continue to suffer significant disparities compared to the rest of the national population in a range of areas, including education, an innovative programme to provide young community members with training in information and communication technologies (ICTs) has demonstrated their value to excluded groups when they are given access. This has already been demonstrated by the increasing provision of sign language media and assistive technologies in countries such as Belgium, where deaf communities once largely excluded from the public sphere have over several decades been able to exploit new technologies — first television, then the internet — to achieve visibility and secure their rights.

Some communities are paying the costs of technological development, however. In Norway, Saami communities in the northern area of Repparfjord have been protesting against the planned development of a copper mine in their territory, agreed to by the government without their consent. In other contexts, there are different challenges. In Italy, in one of the poorest areas in the island of Sardinia, Sulcis-Iglesiente, members of the Sardu-speaking minority have few employment opportunities due to a protracted history of industrial decline. As a result, local residents are heavily reliant on the local armaments factory for their employment, a situation that has split views within the community. Europe: Introduction Europe: Belgium: Digitalization to unlock human rights to sign language – Yes, but at what cost?

Alexandre Bloxs

People use sign language at a demonstration for the International Day of Sign Language, Belgium 2018. Credit: FFSB Belgique 153

Both my parents and grandparents are deaf, as am I. Naturally, I have always used sign language at home since my birth. I have used French Belgian Sign Language (LSFB) as my primary language alongside French and, through all the years of intense practice and use, I definitely can say: sign languages are proper languages!

They offer the same linguistic properties dates back to 1880 and the Second and features as spoken languages, International Congress on Education including phonetic, phonemic, syllabic, for the Deaf that took place in Milan, morphological, syntactic, discourse Italy. This gathering brought together and pragmatic levels of organization. the world’s most eminent specialists I emphasize the plural of ‘languages’ on deaf education — none of them as, contrary to the common belief, sign deaf themselves — to exchange and language is not universal — far from discuss the best practices for the it: there are more than 200 different education of the deaf. At the event’s sign languages around the globe. conclusion, the congress adopted a resolution banning the use of sign Throughout history, and still in some language in deaf education in favour regions of the world today, the use of of an oral system called ‘oralism’. sign languages by deaf people has The message was unequivocal: sign been stigmatized and discriminated language hinders the cognitive and against. I recall my mother and linguistic development of deaf people. grandmother, Nicoleta and Verginia To strive to be a normal human being, respectively — both born and living deaf people must learn to talk. in Romania during the Communist period — explaining to me how they Consequently, for more than a century, would get their hands beaten with deaf people could not use their natural a stick by their teacher if they were language in public. At worst, its use caught signing during classes… was discriminated against, mocked in the Bucharest School for the Deaf. and repressed; at best, it was ignored. This story is just a small drop in the Deaf people — commonly referred ocean of lived deaf experiences. to as ‘Deaf and dumb’ — could not access quality education in their One of the official origins of national sign languages, and therefore discrimination against sign language remained isolated from their society. Belgium: Digitalization to unlock human rights to sign language – Yes, but at what cost? what at but Yes, sign language – human rights to unlock Belgium: Digitalization to The seclusion and isolation of deaf global network. We were finally free. communities from information and Free to sign. Free to communicate in knowledge through the medium of our preferred languages. Free to share sign language has been progressively our creativity, to share our opinions. attenuated with the emergence of Free to campaign online for recognition new technologies. In Belgium, it all of our sign language. Technology is started in the 1980s when the news crucial to spread awareness of the on TV was interpreted in LSFB. For the existence of these languages and first time, my deaf community could their importance for us. It is one of the autonomously access information keys to realizing our most fundamental themselves, at the same time as human right, our right to sign. their hearing counterparts. The emergence of the digitalization Later on, in the 1990s, independent era has also made it possible for remote communication between deaf deaf people to connect outside their people finally happened, thanks to the communities in sign language through appearance of the fax, the SMS and distance interpreting. Sign language the Minitel, a videotex online service interpreters can now work remotely accessible through telephone lines through Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) that was the world’s most successful and Video Relay Service (VRS). VRS is online service prior to the worldwide a telephone service where the spoken web. They could contact each other message is relayed in sign language without relying on a third party. Yet, it and vice versa. VRI means that was reserved only for those who were communication takes place via a video literate, which represented a minority screen and at a distance. Remote of the deaf community — a minority interpreting can be used for different within the minority. The remaining reasons and when the interpreter is not deaf people, including my grandfather at the same location as the users: to Joseph — a loyal member of his local chat with family or friends, to participate deaf club in Liège, Belgium — used in a meeting, to order a pizza, or to to say at the end of their weekly access emergency response services gathering: ‘Let’s meet here next if there has been an accident. Tuesday at eight. Don’t be late!’ Of course, they were late. Of course, my Accessing emergency response grandfather had to wait for his friends, services in a timely manner is crucial sometimes for hours, because one and life-saving for everyone; deaf friend’s car broke down or another got people are no exception. The European sick. What other options did he have? emergency phone number, 112, can be used by every European citizen in None. any area of the European Union (EU), at any time in emergency situations. Not until the birth of the internet. Theoretically. Yet, accessible alternatives Webcam. Social media. Smartphones. for persons with disabilities — meaning Big Bang! The true catalyst for the access by other means than voice, connection of deaf communities, such as SMS, email, fax and text relay technologies unlocked the door of the — is only supported by 22 of the 27 155

EU countries. When supported, some The same goes for deaf people. countries request additional fees to We just do not want to be considered access those services. In addition, as second-class citizens anymore. only eight of those countries offer the opportunity to contact emergency Another perverse technological services in the national sign language development concerning deaf people is through VRS, making our basic human the signing glove. This is an electronic right to access life-saving services a device which attempts to convert the chimera in most parts of the EU. The motions of a sign language into written current global Covid-19 pandemic or spoken words. Although the idea actually highlights the dire predicament looks promising and exciting on paper, of deaf people and is a catalyst to it does not help deaf communities. enhancing our rights. In response to the pandemic, the Ukrainian The issue with signing gloves is government put in place a 24/7 remote dual. First, developers often do not interpreting service, affirming their global consult deaf people through their leadership in providing accessible representative organizations to check emergency services to deaf people. if they are properly representing the sign language. They gain applause Furthermore, companies, universities and recognition for technologies based and public institutions have seen on an element of deaf culture, while new market opportunities to develop deaf people themselves are legally signing avatars as a replacement for and socially left behind, making it a human sign language interpreters. case of . Second, The signing avatar is a 3D technology while the gloves are often presented with a virtual character using sign as devices to improve accessibility language; however, it often operates for the deaf, it is the signers, not with word-for-word translation, which does not take into account the local context or the cultural norms of different sign languages. Sign languages are fully-fledged languages with their own complex structures that are distinct Accessible alternatives from spoken languages. While the for persons with technology has progressed and offers real potential for wider use of signing disabilities – meaning avatars, these computerized products do not surpass the natural quality and access by other means skills provided by human interpreters than voice, such as and translators. There is a good reason why TV broadcasts have not SMS, email, fax and replaced presenters with automated voices and avatars, even though text relay – is only the actual state of the technology supported by 22 of would allow it: this produces no human feelings or identification. the 27 EU countries. Belgium: Digitalization to unlock human rights to sign language – Yes, but at what cost? what at but Yes, sign language – human rights to unlock Belgium: Digitalization to A portrait of Alexandre Bloxs.

the hearing people, who must wear recent book she had read with the the gloves, carry the computers Belgian deaf community; thanks to the or modify their rate of signing: the internet, I can use technology daily to idea being that deaf people must participate in international meetings expend the effort to accommodate with sign language interpreters to themselves to the standards of support the global deaf community in communication of the hearing person. our advocacy work for the realization of our human rights. The benefit of Given the long history of repression technology to us is inestimable. of the use of sign language, making its importance for rendering deaf Yet, there is still a long way ahead in communities invisible to the eyes making our society fully accessible of society, technologies have been to us, with dignity and requiring no shown to be an invaluable tool for extra cost. We urgently need a shift making our rights, our culture and our from the 1880 Milan Congress-based pride visible. Thanks to , my mentality to the full recognition of sign grandfather Joseph could chat with language as the fundamental basis his friends when he was unable to for human rights of the deaf as we attend the weekly gathering at the local strive to be full citizens of our society. deaf club for health reasons; thanks to Once this goal is achieved, we can Facebook, my mother Nicoleta could finally be equal with everyone. share her opinions in LSFB of the most 157 Bulgaria: Using information technologies to achieve positive change for Roma

Alexey Pamporov

From the point of view of human rights and social inclusion, the development of information technologies (IT) in Bulgaria got off to a bad start when, in 1968, the sector was established by the Council of Ministers by means of a secret decree. By the 1980s, when it had expanded into a large industry, it was still playing a covert role in the Cold War competition between the East and the West, including developments in robotics and industrial espionage.

Much has changed since then, of that minorities such as Roma face: course, particularly as technologies most of the national analyses focus on have become accessible to the regional disparities, and age or lack Bulgarian population as a whole. of skills rather than ethnic inequalities Though Bulgaria has the lowest level specifically. However, an international of internet access of any country in survey conducted by the EU’s the European Union (EU) – in 2018, Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) less than three-quarters (72 per cent) in 2016 revealed that over 40 per cent of households had internet access of Roma people in Bulgaria cannot – the situation has been improving afford a private computer, smartphone rapidly, with more and more or internet access – a startling figure enjoying internet access every year. that suggests, even as Bulgaria Nevertheless, an important factor that makes progress, that its Roma the official statistics do not take into population is still being left behind. consideration is the added barriers Bulgaria: Using information technologies to achieve positive change for Roma achieve positive change for to technologies Bulgaria: Using information Proportion of Roma households (%) by access to internet, PC and smartphone (2016)

50

46

40 42 42 41 37

30 32

20 22 20 18

10

0 Internet access A private computer/tablet Smartphone

Cannot afford it Do not want or need it Household has access

Source: Roma in Bulgaria basic things like food and family life. EU-MIDIS II At the same time, the main dialects (2016) ‘Roma’ is often used within the EU differ significantly in their phonetics and as an umbrella term for diverse vocabulary due to the influence of the groups including Gypsies, Travellers, surrounding populations. Since there is Manouches, Ashkali, Sinti and no standardization of the main dialects Boyash, besides Roma (that is, or of the Romani written system in the Romani speakers). As in many other country, attempts to establish Romani European states, the word Tsigani language teaching as an extracurricular signifies this aggregate of ethnicities in subject in the Bulgarian school system Bulgaria – a term that is seen by many have so far achieved little success. community members as pejorative. Moreover, a significant proportion of However, after the ratification of the the population defined as Roma speak Framework Programme for Equal Bulgarian, Turkish or Romanian as their Integration of Roma in Bulgarian mother tongue, rather than Romani: society in 1999, the term Roma many members of these groups do not replaced it in all official documents. self-identify as Roma themselves. Based on the language spoken at home, There is a common language network religion and lifestyle, it is in fact possible of Romani dialects and patois that share to distinguish five main Roma groups a similar grammar and morphology, in Bulgaria and several other subgroups enabling Roma around the world to whose self-identification is distinct communicate with each other about from Roma. 159

The picture is complicated further by A key element in addressing these the absence of reliable data on the inequalities is more accessible and Roma population, a legacy of decades inclusive education. Learning outcomes of discrimination that has resulted in among Roma in Bulgaria are markedly their true numbers being consistently lower than for their non-Roma peers. under-reported. Until recently, the most A recent survey conducted for the Trust accurate figures on their size were not for Social Achievement (TSA) reveals from the official censuses, where Roma some positive trends in this regard: were routinely under-counted, but in the proportion of people with only the ‘confidential reports’ drawn up by or lower educational local police departments based on attainment fell from 15.3 per cent in their surveillance of these communities, 2011 to 5.6 per cent in 2019, while at where numbers were significantly the same time there was an increase higher. Nevertheless, uncertainty in the share of Roma with completed around these numbers persists to this university degrees (from 0.2 per cent day: while the 2011 census found that to 1.2 per cent). Likewise, educational 4.9 per cent of those who provided enrolment in the 7–15 age group rose their ethnicity identified as Roma, to 92.8 per cent in 2019 from 82.8 per alternative estimates suggest that the cent in 2011. Many problems persist, actual proportion may be as much as however, including high levels of school 10 per cent, double the official estimate. drop-out and an increase in school segregation: alarmingly, the share of When it comes to the situation of Roma children enrolled in schools the different communities in terms where Roma made up more than half of poverty, basic services and other of the student body increased from 31 measures of social exclusion, the limited per cent in 2011 to 47 per cent in 2019. information available confirms that they are still some of the most marginalized groups in Bulgaria. This is evident across a range of indicators, from teenage childbirth and early school drop-out to unemployment and inadequate housing. Living in segregated areas A recent survey with limited access to water, sanitation conducted for the or electricity, the impacts translate into poor health outcomes that are reflected Trust for Social Achievement in an estimated life expectancy ten (TSA) reveals some positive years below that of non-Roma. This exclusion is in large part due to their trends: the proportion of official invisibility: as many Roma live in Roma with only primary informal settlements, it is difficult even to register their permanent addresses school or lower educational as a precondition to obtaining identity attainment fell from documents or a citizen registration number for a newborn child. 15.3 per cent in 2011 to 5.6 per cent in 2019. Bulgaria: Using information technologies to achieve positive change for Roma achieve positive change for to technologies Bulgaria: Using information An education mediator and a member from the Roma community in Bulgaria carrying computer equipment. Credit: Amalipe

Code Success: as gamification, flipped classrooms a breakthrough and road-mapping. Most importantly, in IT education it was committed to the principle of equality and seeks to bring together Unsurprisingly, given the broader Roma and non-Roma students from backdrop of discrimination in Bulgaria different neighbourhoods. Overall, and the barriers many face to accessing 32 students were enrolled and 16 education, Roma are poorly represented children completed the full course, in the country’s IT sector. One organization of whom 12 succeeded on the IT that has sought to challenge the status fundamentals test at the Software quo is the Code Success Foundation, University (a partner on the programme) with an initiative to actively target and three received scholarships and recruit Roma children, who until to continue with an additional now have been largely overlooked by advanced module with C# or Java. the industry. Importantly, the project recognized that many of those it aims There were two diametrically opposed to reach are already on the margins reactions from Roma communities. of the education system and at risk of Some parents were hesitant and did not dropping out from mainstream schooling. allow their children to be enrolled (after a successful initial screening) or made As a result, it incorporated an extensive them drop out at a certain point. There preparatory programme that includes was particular resistance towards the preliminary development in ‘soft’ skills participation of Roma girls due to fears like Bulgarian, English and mathematics, of them being subjected to violence as well as psychosocial support to or human trafficking. However, those help students navigate personal and children who were allowed to remain family difficulties, before the IT training in the programme were positive and itself begins. Given that many of those engaged, with attendance rates over enrolled may have been alienated by 70 per cent. One of the children even their own experiences at school, the graduated ‘in secret’ from his parents, teaching methodology combined a since they were against his involvement range of innovative approaches such but he was old enough to consent. 161

The project had an added value for all March 2020, the Bulgarian government enrolled children, regardless of their final established a national lockdown in assessment within the Code Success response, the entire educational system Foundation: despite high drop-out was forced to transfer all its material rates among their communities, they online and adapt to distance learning all graduated and saw their scores in using computers. Concerned about Bulgarian, English and mathematics the educational inequalities, the Centre improve as well. Five are now university Amalipe, a Bulgarian Romani NGO, students and all the rest have jobs. ran an express survey of around 200 Nevertheless, the organizers of the schools which found that significant programme are themselves acutely percentages of students in schools aware of the fact that initiatives such as with a large proportion of vulnerable theirs can only go so far. In the words children lacked the necessary equipment of Vesselin Drobenov, the CEO behind and technical skills to access online this project, ‘despite all the good news, education effectively. In response, it the technologies are no panacea for launched an appeal, ‘Old technology for education’. Alongside the advantages a new beginning’, to collect donations of the new technologies — increased of old PCs, laptops and tablets. At effectiveness due to quicker access the same time, in neighbourhoods to information, new pedagogical where there is no internet access, approaches, prompt feedback and skills some educational mediators have development relevant to today’s work delivered printed materials to the market — there are some shortcomings homes of affected children. too, such as the reduction in face-to-face communication and personal interaction. There is certainly a real danger that, alongside all its direct health risks, Perhaps the greatest challenge, however, Covid-19 could deepen existing is the unequal access to internet and inequalities. At the same time, it has IT technologies that continues to affect made the questions of poverty and Roma in the country. In this context, lack of access to proper educational while small initiatives such as this one services for Roma children more can deliver extraordinary results, their visible than ever. We must hope that, impact will remain limited until there building on the success of activities is a more fundamental transformation like the Code Success initiative, the of Bulgarian society to ensure that authorities take this opportunity to the Roma population is recognized, overcome the long-standing barriers to respected and included as equal citizens. schooling and technology Roma have faced to deliver equitable and inclusive ‘Old technology for a new education for all at this time of crisis. beginning’: Meeting the challenge of Covid-19 The author would like to express his gratitude to TSA for providing access The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic to (at the time of writing) unpublished has brought many of these long-standing data. The opinions expressed here issues around discrimination, educational do not necessarily express the exclusion and limited access to new opinions of TSA and Global Metrix. technologies to the fore. When, in Bulgaria: Using information technologies to achieve positive change for Roma achieve positive change for to technologies Bulgaria: Using information Italy: Mining, migration and munitions in Sardinia – a linguistic minority struggles with economic decline

Riccardo Labianco

Rusty mine carts on abandoned tracks, Ingortosu Arbus, Sardinia. Credit: Marco Ledda 163

With a little over 6,000 inhabitants, the town of Domusnovas is located in Sulcis-Iglesiente, a region in the south-west of the Italian island of Sardinia. One of the poorest areas of Italy, with extremely limited employment opportunities, the few jobs available in the area are very precious. As a result, local residents do everything in their power to protect their jobs and avoid having to migrate outside Sardinia in search of work elsewhere.

One of the most significant back to the Neolithic period. While employers in Domusnovas is a Italian is now widely used, Sardinia’s bomb manufacturing plant: around native language, Sardu, has continued 300 people work there. Some of the to develop along with the culture of armaments produced in the factory this island’s people. A 2007 survey have ended up in and found that over 68 per cent of those the (UAE), where sampled claimed to speak Sardu and they have been used by these states in another 29 per cent to understand their military campaign in . In the it, despite not using it frequently, summer of 2019, however, the Italian suggesting that the language remains government decided to halt further an important feature for the majority transfers of bombs to these countries of Sardinians. Though classified by due to the large number of civilian UNESCO as ‘definitely endangered’, casualties, widespread destruction and a number of measures have been breaches of international law taking taken to ensure its survival. In addition place in Yemen. An added justification, to Italy’s National Law No. 482 (1999) put forward by Luigi Di Maio, at the recognizing the safeguarding and time deputy prime minister, was that promotion of minority languages, this would help stem immigration from including Sardu, in 2018 the Region conflict-affected countries to Italy. In of Sardinia enacted Regional Law No. Domusnovas, however, the export 22: this outlined a proactive policy ban had a much more immediate for the preservation and promotion of effect – suddenly, the jobs of hundreds the linguistic identity of the Sardinian of workers were under threat. people through the teaching of the language in schools and its use in A history of marginalization public offices, among other provisions. and economic decline Nevertheless, to fully develop, A linguistic minority, Sardinians can a language’s speakers need to be trace their presence on the island able to live and prosper in the area Italy: Mining, migration and munitions in Sardinia – a linguistic minority struggles with economic decline Sardinia Italy: Mining, migration and munitions in where it is spoken. However, among the production of industrial explosives other factors, migration to other areas in a plant at Domusnovas. This came to of Italy, where Sardu is not spoken, has an end in 2001 when the company that undermined the efforts to safeguard owned it, Società Esplosivi Industriali and revitalize the language. While SpA, converted its production from the lack of economic opportunities civilian to military purposes. In 2010, has been a major driver of movement the plant’s ownership passed to a away from the island since the new company, Rheinmetall Weapons end of the nineteenth century, in Munitions (RWM), controlled by part due to the marginalization of a German multinational corporation the region, the Italian government involved in the manufacturing of periodically sought to contain migrant armaments, Rheinmetall Defence. flows by creating employment in the region in sectors like mining. On the face of it, business for Rheinmetall Defence was booming, Sulcis-Iglesiente, like other parts of with global sales worth more than Sardinia, has hosted mines since €3.2 billion in 2018. That same year, antiquity. From the mid-nineteenth RWM’s CEO announced plans to century, mining intensified and expand Domusnovas’s plant further, industrialized until it was widely with an investment of €35 million seen as a critical part of the region’s and the creation of between 150 and economy. Over time, however, the 200 new jobs. Then came the Italian extraction of zinc, lead, coal and other government’s decision in July 2019 resources progressively became to halt the export of bombs to Saudi more expensive and less profitable Arabia and the UAE — a decision that for various reasons, including the low cost around 130 of RWM’s employees quality of the minerals in the area. their jobs as demand immediately Demand therefore decreased and with fell. For local residents working at it the number of jobs in mining, falling the plant, these forced redundancies from around 9,000 workers in 1951 to were their worst nightmare. less than 2,000 by 1979. The vanishing job prospects in Sulcis-Iglesiente forced The case of Domusnovas is a complex many residents to look for jobs in the one. On the one hand, Sulcis-Iglesiente’s so-called continente (the continent) history of failing economic prospects — a term used by Sardinians to signify and high unemployment has led some the rest of Italy, as well as abroad. to prioritize jobs first and foremost, even favouring the production of From mining to bomb armaments implicated in the suffering making: Domusnovas of innocent civilians elsewhere. plant today Nevertheless, since armaments manufacturing in Domusnovas began, The history of mining in the area, as a number of civil society organizations well as its steady decline, explains and public figures, such as the local why there is now a bomb factory in bishop, have opposed it and called Domusnovas. The mining sector fuelled for the development of other sources a series of satellite activities, including of employment in the region. 165

Portraits of miners who worked at Carbosulcis, a coal mine in the town of Nuraxi Figus in the province of Carbonia-Iglesias. Sardinia, Italy. Credit: Emanuela Meloni Investing in a better future through a systematic, long-term for Sulcis-Iglesiente approach that embraces the enjoyment of a range of different One of the most prominent groups rights in the region. This means in the movement is the Comitato that, while the Italian government Riconversione RWM (RWM should be able to take steps to halt Reconversion Committee), established the suffering in Yemen and promote in 2017 and working with other peace in line with its international associations to promote sustainable commitments, Sardinian workers and peaceful development for must also have the right to secure Sulcis-Iglesiente. It has been engaged employment in the area where they in a series of protests, advocacy and, can speak their own language. more recently, legal activities directed at both local government bodies It is perhaps not surprising that, and ordinary citizens, with the aim of given its long history of economic pushing for the military plant to be stagnation and governmental converted back to civilian use: for neglect, employment and technology example, they envision that the workers have come to intersect in such at the plant, many of whom have a precarious and problematic fashion chemical and steel-manufacturing skills, in Domusnovas. The current situation could be involved in the production of needs to be understood in this electric car batteries, a sector that has context. While it is understandable been growing recently. The committee that the province’s dependence also proposes to look beyond on the production of armaments is Domusnovas’s plant itself. It explicitly a source of profound moral unease, supports the idea that the development particularly their deployment in of Sulcis-Iglesiente should be based a military campaign that has caused on other activities, such as agriculture countless civilian deaths in Yemen and . This idea and pushed the country to the brink is in line with what some experts of collapse, the Italian government say: the area needs investments should now focus on promoting in infrastructure and renewed a broader plan for sustainable efforts to diversify its economy. development for Sulcis-Iglesiente and the Sardu-speaking population. This is not a view shared by everyone: for example, some workers are The author would like to thank sceptical that the plant can readily Mr Arnaldo Scarpa, spokesperson be repurposed for other forms of of the Comitato Riconversione production. Nevertheless, there is RWM, and Ms Francesca Sanna, broad agreement that the situation PhD Candidate in History and in Domusnovas can only be resolved Civilization, Université de Paris. 167 Norway: Saami communities contend with the latest form of discrimination – ‘green colonialism’

Oula-Antti Labba

Nussir ASA, a Norwegian mining company, is planning to open a copper mine in Repparfjorden (Riehpovuotna in Saami), a coastal area of Saamiland in the northernmost part of the country. The project’s supporters have sought to justify the project on the grounds that the large amounts of copper it produces are a vital element in the production of certain renewable technologies. For the indigenous Saami living there, however, it is a striking example of the threat of ‘green colonialism’ to their way of life.

Besides its long-standing status In the meantime, should the Nussir as part of Saami traditional lands, mining process proceed under the Repparfjorden has also been current permit, preparations are under designated as a national salmon way for large-scale protests. This is fjord, fed by a number of smaller not the first time the community has watercourses. Nevertheless, despite been forced to take action against the many years of resistance from the expropriation of their land in the name Saami parliament in Norway, local of development. In the 1980s, the communities and environmental controversial Alta hydroelectric power groups, the Norwegian government station triggered a series of highly approved the concession in publicized protests that, while failing February 2019. The only way to to prevent the dam’s construction, stop the mine now is through had a lasting impact on the status

a legal battle in the courts. of Saami rights in Norway. Among colonialism’ discrimination – ‘green of form with the latest Saami communities contend Norway: ‘No machine should be allowed into Nussir before the case has gone through the court system,’ says Beaska Niillas, a Saami activist and politician who is moblizing resistance to the mine. ‘It could be a bigger thing than the Alta conflict in the 1980s. Five thousand people have signed up to a list indicating that they will come and stop the mine.’

other issues, it contributed to the Unsurprisingly, Niillas regards country’s subsequent ratification these arguments with some of International Labour Organisation scepticism. ‘It looks like the state (ILO) Convention No. 169 on uses the climate change argument indigenous and tribal peoples. when there is a benefit to the capitalist economic interest,’ he Saami are hoping that protests could says. ‘In my opinion, in reality they again bring visibility to what would be are usually not so interested in a catastrophic development for their driving climate-friendly politics.’ community. ‘No machine should be allowed into Nussir before the case Renewable resources such as has gone through the court system,’ solar, wind, tidal, hydro, biomass says Beaska Niillas, a Saami activist and geothermal energy are growing and politician who is moblizing rapidly, and are now accepted to resistance to the mine. ‘It could be be an essential element in climate a bigger thing than the Alta conflict change mitigation. However, these in the 1980s. Five thousand people solutions require a considerable supply have signed up to a list indicating that of a range of materials, including they will come and stop the mine.’ copper, the production of which is highly intensive in terms of energy An added challenge is that, consumption and emissions. The notwithstanding the negative Nussir mine would have an immediate implications of the mine for the negative impact on the fragile Arctic local ecosystem, many of its environment. The dumping of the proponents have sought to justify it waste from the mine would be in environmental terms. For example, harmful to the fjord, the and the Norwegian trade minister Torbjørn the fish. The mine, its widespread Røe Isaksen has pointed to the use infrastructure and its noise pollution of copper in electric vehicles, wind would reduce reindeer-herding turbines and other ‘green’ technologies. pastures to a minimum in the area. The implications for sea salmon fishing 169 could also be catastrophic. And the the oceans. Norway, along with people who would suffer the most, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and while benefiting the least, are Saami. Turkey, is one of just four countries in the world where mining companies Representatives of the Saami are allowed to dispose of mining parliament highlighted the devastating waste in the sea. These mine impacts the mine would have, not risk contaminating fish stocks in only on the local environment but also surrounding areas with heavy metals on the livelihoods that depend on it, such as mercury, as well as disturbing including reindeer herding and salmon spawning grounds, with devastating fishing. The Repparfjorden area is an impacts on both the quantity and important calving and summer pasture quality of local fish supply. for the reindeer in Fiettar district, whose long-established life cycles may now The implications, at both a community A Saami woman stands be disrupted by this development. and national level, could be profound. surrounded by Silje Karine Muotka, a member of the reindeer during Environmentalists are also worried Saami parliament of Norway, argues the autumn migration about the impact of the Nussir mining that the country’s fishing industry in Arctic Norway. on sea life, particularly through could be badly hit if the mine goes Abbie Trayler- the dumping of mining waste in ahead. ‘I am also really worried Smith/Panos about the impact of mining on the and migration for reindeer populations fish population, on the reputation of — or the Saami communities which Norway as a fish-producing country depend on them. Research suggests and even on the ability to sell fish as that reindeer movement is dramatically human food internationally’, she says. curtailed in areas close to wind farms. Analysing data gathered from The Repparfjorden case is not the only GPS-trackers for reindeer, one study headache for Saami people. Recently found that the construction of two a southern Saami reindeer-herding relatively small wind farms in northern village lost a court battle against the led to a decline by as much Fosen Vind wind turbine company as 76 per cent in the use by herds in the Storheia area of Trondheim of their original migration routes. in central Norway. The company is now planning to build a wind farm Despite these setbacks, Muotka on the community’s reindeer-herding says that the Saami parliament is pastures: once built, it will be the now preparing its next steps with largest operating onshore wind farm regard to the Nussir mine, including in Europe. This is part of a wider shift a study on its potential impact on across Scandinavia to wind farms. Saami livelihoods. Every argument, While they may offer the possibility of every piece of evidence and every a cleaner energy supply, at present aspect of traditional knowledge hundreds of wind turbines are being will be needed if the community built with little appreciation of the decides to take on the Norwegian potential negative impacts on grazing government in the courts. 171 Editor’s preface: minorities, indigenous peoples and the right to culture Middle East and North Africa 173

In a context where ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region face persecution, online hate speech has played an increasingly visible role in inciting violence and discrimination against them. While the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)’s brutal social media campaign has garnered much attention in recent years, the weaponization of the internet to vilify minority communities is widespread and not confined to ISIS alone.

In Egypt, for example, Coptic Christians contend with online hate speech on a regular basis, including from religious leaders, prominent journalists and even politicians. Technologies pose other human rights threats too, that may even be mainstreamed into public policy by governments themselves. In Iran, following the announcement of new restrictions in January 2020, members of unrecognized religious minorities are no longer able to register their identities on their biometric identity cards – a situation that could deny them access to many essential services and citizenship rights.

For communities with a long history of exclusion, the increasing collection of personal data is an understandable cause for alarm. The Covid-19 pandemic has made these issues around privacy even more acute. In Lebanon, for instance, alongside considerable economic barriers and regulations on their movement, some Syrian refugees may be reluctant to access virus testing due to fears that this could put them at risk of detention.

Nevertheless, the MENA region also offers some of the most inspiring examples of online activism by minority and indigenous community members using the power of social media and the internet to document human rights violations, highlight discrimination and hold perpetrators of abuses to account. Initiatives such as the Ceasefire programme in Iraq and Syria, a platform for citizens to report human rights abuses as they happen, demonstrate how the same technologies used against minorities by extremists and repressive governments can be successfully deployed as tools to promote accountability, tolerance and peace. Middle East and NorthMiddle East Africa: Introduction Egypt: Copts continue to suffer the effects of hate speech online

Coptic children in Minya, Egypt. Credit: Luis Dafos / Alamy 175

The proliferation of social media networks and the expansion of internet use has led to new challenges related to monitoring and preventing hate speech. Depending on the structure and nature of the platform used, social media can help to counter hate or allow its spread through more decentralized means.

And while international law calls for Al Youm Al Sabi online news site and the prohibition of hate speech, the ways newspaper, which in November 2019 different governments respond to the featured a piece by the chief editor threat it poses vary widely — and in entitled ‘Muslim Brotherhood, Jews and some cases governments can actively Shiites: The trinity of evil in the world’, contribute to its proliferation online. before widespread condemnation led to the piece being taken down from In Egypt, hate speech persists the site. However, on social media, for a variety of structural reasons. the situation is more fluid as threads These include the inability of the of hate speech can go unnoticed, state, through its justice and public despite the harm they cause. educational institutions, to mediate differences between ethnic and The attacks against the Copts religious groups, not to mention its of Kom al-Raheb failure to institutionalize minority Kom al-Raheb, a village in Samalut, rights, thus keeping communities in Minya, is home to around 2,500 Copts. a perpetual state of low-level conflict. For years they have not been able to The lack of legislation defining hate get a formal permit to build their church. speech, let alone prohibiting it, Part of the reason is the resistance of has meant it remains a grey area some Muslims in the village on the in Egyptian law, with no measures basis that the presence of a church in place to monitor or prevent it. would be against their religious beliefs. With no other church nearby, however, This has left intercommunal relations the Copts eventually decided to use vulnerable to manipulation, as is a house for prayer. On 10 December evident in mainstream media where, 2018, the first mass was held in the depending on the political context, building, only to end with security different messages are communicated forces demanding its immediate at different times, including hate closure, deeming that it was illegal to speech. A case in point is the pray in a building that had not been suffer the effects of hate speech online hate of the effects suffer Copts continue to Egypt: While the Egyptian

Constitution was amended neighbours had a right to build their in 2019 specifically to own place of worship were called ‘traitors’ and accused of accepting criminalize incitement ‘hush money’ to allow the church to to hatred, there is no be built. The perpetrators on Facebook also argued that the Copts had brought corresponding provision ‘strife’ to the village by wishing to build that punishes hate speech. a church, calling them ‘dogs’ who Article 98(f) of the Penal would have to pay ‘a heavy price’. Code punishes speech that While this undoubtedly constitutes the sort of ‘incitement to discrimination, constitutes ‘contempt for hostility or violence’ that is explicitly one of the divine religions’. prohibited by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), contributing directly to the registered as a church. This was despite attacks that ensued, in the absence the fact that Law 80/2016 on church of effective legislation incidents such construction, passed two years before, as this can easily go unpunished. does not view the holding of a mass in While the Egyptian Constitution was a house as illegal, and indeed bans the amended in 2019 specifically to closure of any place which has religious criminalize incitement to hatred, there rituals conducted in it. is no corresponding provision that punishes hate speech. Article 98(f) of The next day, Copts stood outside the Penal Code, commonly known as the building to protest its closure and the blasphemy law, punishes speech to prevent the removal of the electricity that constitutes ‘contempt for one of and water meters by the local authority, the divine religions’. While this law which would have effectively rendered is frequently used to target freedom the building uninhabitable. These of expression and any perceived protests were followed by violent criticism of the official interpretation attacks by some Muslim residents of Islam, it fails to protect citizens on Coptic homes in the village. belonging to other faiths as well as Importantly, some of the assailants those such as agnostics and atheists were incited through Facebook to who do not subscribe to any religion engage in these assaults, using a at all. While a number of laws were number of different narratives that developed to deal with online crimes, sought to exploit communal tensions. including Law 175/2018 (the IT law) First, they actively exploited religion to that came into effect in August 2018, mobilize other Muslims, using verses just a few months before the attacks from the Qur’an to justify their claims. in Samalut, none of these laws have They also identified themselves as been invoked in the official response. representing the pure faith which, they argued, bans any temples or churches Following the attacks, police forces for non-Muslims. By contrast, other arrested individuals from both sides Muslims who felt that their Christian and then established a ‘reconciliation 177 session’ — an extra-legal proceeding Local authorities repeatedly favour commonly used in the wake of decisions that maintain the existing communal violence that typically status quo and often perpetuate ‘mediates’ an informal resolution discrimination against minorities. between groups without distinguishing In some parts of the country, there is between the perpetrators of the violence also a social acceptance of negative (usually belonging to the majority) and speech against non-Muslims that is its victims (overwhelmingly members of not being adequately challenged by minorities). The session ruled that the Egypt’s educational institutions. This church issue be completely left to the in turn is reflected in the absence of state authorities, despite their failure to meaningful institutional mechanisms allow its construction for the previous to identify and punish hate speech three decades, and that no party should against minorities. While there are intervene in the case again. Hence, the many important steps that can de facto decision was that the Copts be taken to curb the prevalence would continue to be denied a place of of hate speech on social media, worship for fear of provoking some of including systematic monitoring and their Muslim neighbours — a situation reporting, there also needs to be that favoured the existing balance of a broader transformation of Egyptian power in the village rather than the rights politics and society in general. of the minority. With clear legal protections for all Indeed, what is online is impacted by religions in place and a concrete that which is offline and impacts it in commitment to minority rights, as return. On the one hand, as the Kom well as a just and equitable system al-Raheb case shows, social media can of governance that respects human be a catalyst for hate speech and violent rights, hate speech on Egyptian social attacks when left unchecked — hence media would likely be far less prevalent the need for more effective monitoring than it is today. In the meantime, and reporting of hate speech online. the situation online will continue to At the same time, beyond the internet, replicate the same climate of hostility there is a wider failure to ensure that and discrimination for minorities that rights are guaranteed for all, including they experience in their daily lives. the rights of religious minorities to practise their religion. suffer the effects of hate speech online hate of the effects suffer Copts continue to Egypt: Iran: For religious minorities, biometric identity cards threaten to become a new tool for surveillance and discrimination

Miriam Puttick

Around the world, governments and private enterprises alike are increasingly moving towards the adoption of biometric technology to enhance their daily operations in a variety of sectors – from banking to immigration to crime control.

Biometric technology involves detailed information about a person’s the collection of physical data, such as activities. Without strong protections fingerprints, iris scans or voice samples, in place, biometric data collected which are unique to an individual. It is consensually for one purpose (such often lauded for the benefits it offers in as identity verification) can easily be terms of enhancing security, improving used for other purposes (for example, user experience and preventing fraud. surveillance) without the knowledge or consent of the people involved. However, the adoption of biometric technology also poses significant In 2015, the Iranian government began challenges and threats to privacy phasing in a biometric national identity and human rights. Some biometric card: this is now the card issued to identifiers can reveal sensitive all new applicants and to anyone information about a person — renewing an expired national identity such as health status or ethnic card. The card features a smart ‘chip’ background — which can be misused and stores biometric data including in discriminatory ways. If biometric iris scans, fingerprints and facial identifiers are used in multiple types images. The smart identity card, or of governmental transactions and the 11-digit number associated with linked to a central database, they it, are required in order to access can also provide significant and a whole range of government services 179

— from obtaining a driver’s licence to Recently, Iran’s new smart identity accessing a pension. Iran’s banking card has also turned into a vehicle of sector has also shifted towards the discrimination. In January 2020, the adoption of biometric methods and Iranian government ceased allowing now requires customers to provide their applicants for the card to choose ‘Other’ smart identity card in order to carry in the religion field on the application out many banking transactions. More form, which had previously been worryingly, Iranian officials have also one of the available options. Instead, announced plans that would require applicants must now choose one of citizens to verify their identity using the four officially recognized religions the smart identity card in order to given on the form – Islam, Christianity, access the domestic internet network. Judaism or Zoroastrianism. This leaves members of smaller religious In a country where citizens are minorities with only two options: either already subjected to high levels of lie about their religious identity or be surveillance, the introduction of the prevented from obtaining the card. smart identity card raises significant concerns. The Iranian government Iran’s unrecognized religious minorities has already used facial recognition — which include the country’s sizeable technology to identify and arrest Bahá’í community, as well as smaller protesters and political dissidents, communities such as Mandaeans and the collection of biometric data and Yarsan — are already subjected potentially gives it the tools to do so to many forms of official and unofficial even more efficiently. If biometric discrimination. They do not benefit identifiers were made a requirement from the legal protections offered in order to access the internet, to members of the four religions Iranians who express dissenting named in the Iranian Constitution. opinions online could be very quickly They are excluded from running for identified and targeted by the state. political leadership positions and often denigrated by Iran’s religious Moreover, mandating the use of the establishment. Some have faced smart identity card across a range of attacks on their houses of worship sectors could give the government or have been arbitrarily imprisoned access to very comprehensive as a result of their beliefs. information about a citizen’s activities, particularly in the absence of The Bahá’í community faces particularly legislation restricting the collation harsh persecution from the state. and use of such data. While a draft The official position of the Iranian Personal Data Protection Act has government is that the Bahá’í faith is been under discussion in Iran, a ‘man-made religion’ and a political human rights groups have criticized movement disguising itself as a spiritual it for allowing personal data to community. A 1991 government be processed without individuals’ memorandum, signed by Supreme consent for vaguely defined ‘security’ Leader Ali Khamenei, called for Bahá’ís purposes, and for giving individuals to be dealt with in such a way ‘that their linked to the security apparatus power progress and development shall be to oversee the collection of data. blocked’ and the government actively new tool for surveillance and discrimination for become a new tool to threaten minorities, biometric identity cards religious Iran: For National ID card of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

excludes them from This has wide-ranging implications and employment. Bahá’ís are also for access to social and economic prevented from attending religious and rights. The card and its unique social gatherings, and their homes are identifier are needed to complete an regularly raided, with their religious array of essential functions, such as books and items confiscated. obtaining a driver’s licence, applying for a credit card, buying property and While the government did not enrolling in university. If, on the other make any official announcement hand, Bahá’í report themselves as to accompany the removal of the Muslims in order to obtain the card, ‘Other’ religion field, the change in the Iranian government would be policy seems to have been spurred equipped with statistical data that it by comments from a conservative could potentially use to deny their member of parliament, Mohammad presence and distort the true religious Javad Abtahi. In January 2019, he make-up of the country’s population. criticized the inclusion of an ‘Other’ option in the identification card’s As Iran continues to expand the religion field, claiming that it meant the usage and applications of biometric government was bestowing legitimacy identifiers, the full implications of the on ‘deviant’ sects. He then wrote transition to the smart identity card to the interior minister demanding are yet to be completely understood. a review of the application process However, developments so far should for the smart identity card and the serve as an early warning of the ways removal of the ‘Other’ option. in which biometric technology can be used to accelerate discrimination, Since Bahá’í teachings forbid their exclusion and surveillance if it is not followers from denying their faith, well regulated within a rights-respecting a Bahá’í citizen who wishes to remain legal framework. faithful to the religion has no choice but to forfeit the smart identity card. 181 Iraq and Syria: Documenting human rights violations in conflict – the Ceasefire online reporting tool

Miriam Puttick

In conflict zones around the world, violations against minorities are often an inseparable element of the core conflict dynamics. States and armed groups will often harness long-standing tensions and stoke hatred against minorities as they vie for power and resources, while the escalation of conflict can exacerbate the vulnerability of already-marginalized groups.

In Iraq, for example, the rise of the Monitoring violations of human so-called Islamic State of Iraq and rights and international humanitarian al-Sham (ISIS) and other armed groups law in conflict zones often poses from 2014 onwards saw patterns of immense challenges. For one thing, marginalization of the country’s ethnic the existence of armed violence often and religious minorities transform into prevents human rights organizations, widespread attacks and even genocide journalists, UN agencies and others against those communities. Ethnic and engaged in monitoring from accessing religious minorities were uprooted en the territories where violations are masse from their historical homelands occurring. Local human rights actors, and subjected to violations, including for their part, may become displaced killings, abductions, property destruction, or preoccupied with their own survival and attacks on their religious and cultural needs. When they do choose to heritage. Footage of these atrocities was continue their work, they operate at disseminated widely across social media increased risk to themselves, often platforms, which ISIS used with shocking facing death threats from armed efficiency to spread its ideology and groups for speaking out or exposing recruit new members. violations. In situations where minorities Ceasefire online reportingtool online – the Ceasefire Syria: Documenting human rights violations in conflict Iraq and are disconnected from centres monitoring’ of violations of human rights of influence or lack organizations and international humanitarian law in defending their rights, violations conflict settings. Piloted in Iraq as part of can go completely unreported. a joint project by Minority Rights Group Moreover, the high degree of political International (MRG) and the Ceasefire polarization that accompanies conflict Centre for Civilian Rights, the tool seeks and attempts by various actors to bridge the gap between traditional to control the narrative of events human rights data collection and often lead to difficulty in gathering unbounded crowdsourcing. Though accurate and impartial information accessible to anyone with an internet on the human rights situation. connection, the tool prompts users to report violations in a way that conforms However, this does not mean that there with international legal standards and is no information being produced in increases the future usability of the data. such settings. Thanks to the spread of mobile internet, social media platforms The core component of the tool is a and smartphone technologies, bilingual (Arabic-English) reporting form, ordinary civilians are able to document which permits users at a minimum to developments on the ground and specify the title, description, category share them with the outside world and location of the human rights at the click of a button — even in the violation. The category function, world’s most dangerous conflict zones. which prompts users to choose from Facebook, YouTube and other social a predefined list of internationally media platforms are often awash with recognized human rights violations, first-hand information, photos and enables easy analysis and filtering of the videos coming directly from witnesses data. In addition, the expanded version to violations. The content of social media of the form asks for additional details is becoming difficult to ignore, as seen about the victim, witness, consequences, in the rise of open-source intelligence motive and perpetrator of the violence, (OSINT) approaches. However, this prompting users to supply information content is often not in a format that can that could be important in determining be harnessed effectively for human the nature of the abuse according to rights advocacy. Information shared international standards. For example, online can be difficult to verify and users are asked to give any details often lacks crucial details needed to that would suggest the attack was establish the nature of the violation and carried out due to the victim’s ethnicity, hold perpetrators to account. Moreover, religion or culture – which can be used intersecting privacy rules on a multitude to establish the threshold for hate of platforms mean that vast amounts of crimes, or genocide. data are often not easily accessible to Users can also attach photos and relevant human rights actors, such as other documentary evidence to their international bodies. reports or include links to YouTube footage or media coverage, which These challenges provided the impetus helps make the information verifiable. behind the creation of the Ceasefire online reporting tool, a digital platform Reports submitted through the form that seeks to enable ‘civilian-led are stripped of personally identifying 183

information and plotted onto a live, as ‘bounded crowdsourcing’, the logic Yezidi men interactive map visible on the tool’s of training smaller groups, who in turn rebuild religious temples that landing page, which shows the train others, leads to the formation of were destroyed distribution of violations by location and a critical mass of skilled activists and by ISIS in the type. Sensitive data, such as names organizations and results in a higher town of Bashiqa, Iraq. and contact details of victims, witnesses quality of human rights documentation. Credit: Andrea and perpetrators, is stored securely on DiCenzo/dpa a secondary server in case it is needed Since the tool’s launch in February for future follow-up or court proceedings. 2017, more than 3,700 violation reports have been submitted by civilian However, civilian-led monitoring activists. The online tool has thus is not simply about providing new served as a window into patterns of technological tools – it is also about violations taking place as part of the empowering civilians themselves so conflict in Iraq that would otherwise they can use such tools effectively. go unreported. For example, through Through partnerships with human long-term partnerships and trainings rights NGOs, including minority-led with women’s rights activists in Iraq, organizations, MRG and Ceasefire the tool has enabled the production conduct regular in-country training of detailed information on the events for civilian activists. At the relationship between armed conflict training sessions, participants are not and family-based violence, an only taught how to use the online tool, under-studied and under-documented but also given a thorough grounding phenomenon. These cases led to the in international human rights concepts publication of a series of three reports and components of strong human on the topic, and the design of new rights reporting, including interview interventions providing direct support techniques, victim protection practices to refugee and displaced women and verification strategies. Also known facing gender-based violence. Ceasefire online reportingtool online – the Ceasefire Syria: Documenting human rights violations in conflict Iraq and In situations of escalating violence, the situation there. With the Ceasefire the online tool offers the possibility tool, we were able to design forms of obtaining crucial information from specific to the area and give people the ground in real time. When on the ground the option of reporting large-scale protests erupted in Iraq violations over the internet. As a result, in late 2018, reports of excessive use we are monitoring the situation without of force by security forces against exposing researchers to the dangers peaceful protesters began to appear of entering the territory.’ Civilian on the online tool. These cases were activists were also able to uncover incorporated into a wider report on patterns of attack by Turkish-backed repression of civilian activists in Iraq, Syrian armed groups against Yezidi, which was then used as a basis for Christian and Alawite villages around urgent appeals and advocacy pushes Afrin, about which very little is known at the UN Human Rights Council and internationally. in other forums. While the online tool has provided a According to the director of an Iraqi way to surmount some of the obstacles NGO, the value of the online tool lies to human rights monitoring in conflict, in its ability to function as a secure the work has not been without its outlet for activists engaged in human challenges. Despite all reassurances rights documentation in highly volatile of confidentiality, victims can still be contexts. ‘In the current situation in afraid to report violations — fearing Iraq, the major risk facing human rights backlash from their families, their activists and defenders is reporting communities or armed groups. Where violations. Many activists have faced the authorities deliberately shut down threats and blackmailing for their or throttle internet access, there can reports, particularly if their identity is be delays in urgent reports being revealed. The online tool helps them uploaded online. Moreover, in situations prevent these risks as they easily use of prolonged violence, even the most the tool and it is anonymous.’ committed activists can begin to lose hope that an end is in sight — Building on its initial successes in Iraq, decreasing their motivation to go on the tool has since been expanded with the documentation work. These to other contexts in the region. challenges prove that technology alone Following the Turkish invasion of Afrin is not enough to resolve the enduring in north-western Syria and the mass problems of human rights. Sustainable expulsion of the city’s mainly Kurdish change is unlikely to be achieved population, the tool served as a crucial unless technology is deployed in platform to document the violations conjunction with other measures — taking place against the population from political pressure to legal advocacy of the area in the midst of a near-total and education. However, harnessing media blackout. According to a Syrian technology as part of a multi-pronged Kurdish activist from Afrin, ‘Up to now, approach can offer a modern strategy all independent journalists are barred for dealing with modern challenges, from entering Afrin, so there are no which continue to change the media or human rights reports covering landscape of human rights activism. 185 Lebanon: For Syrian refugees, discrimination is the greatest barrier to accessing Covid-19 testing

Rasha Al Saba

Recent years have seen a real transformation in the way we treat patients and maintain the health of populations. Among these developments are advances in medical diagnostics technology, broadly understood as equipment and supplies that allow clinicians to measure and observe an individual’s health to form a diagnosis.

Such testing is particularly crucial at a key measure that must be at the every stage during a disease outbreak, core of their responses. This is an as it allows for the mapping of who approach backed by Tedros Adhanom has a disease as well as who is at Ghebreyesus, Director General of risk of becoming infected. Without the WHO, who stated: ‘Our key diagnostic testing, it is impossible message is: test, test, test’, during to strategize responses effectively. a press briefing on 16 March 2020.

The current Covid-19 pandemic Across the world there have been demonstrates this clearly. The disease, different barriers to putting this into which is caused by severe acute practice, not only technical barriers respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 but also social, political and economic (SARS-CoV-2), first emerged in Wuhan, ones. These issues are especially China, in late 2019 before spreading evident in Lebanon. Though it hosted rapidly across the world. By 11 March significant numbers of Palestinian 2020, it was declared a pandemic refugees before the outbreak of the by the World Health Organization Syrian conflict in 2011, since then (WHO). With governments racing to its refugee population has risen slow the spread of the virus, most substantially. According to the United recognize that access to testing is Nations High Commissioner for Lebanon: For Syrian refugees, discrimination is the greatest barrier to accessing Covid-19 testing accessing Covid-19 to barrier discrimination is the greatest Syrian refugees, For Lebanon: A Syrian refugee woman puts a face mask on a boy as a precaution against the spread of coronavirus in al-Wazzani area, southern Lebanon. Credit: Ali Hashisho/ REUTERS

Refugees (UNHCR), there are The Covid-19 pandemic hit Lebanon more than 1 million Syrian refugees during one of its worst economic registered in Lebanon, though different crises in decades. The country has agencies estimate the true number long struggled to finance its health to be in the region of 1.5 million. As care system, following the end of a result, Lebanon is now the country the civil war and subsequent years with the highest per capita refugee of privatization. As a result, the population in the world. The large national health system now finds itself Syrian refugee population, many under-resourced and insufficiently of whom are unregistered, were funded, struggling to maintain a already struggling with the effects proper supply chain of medicines of years of discrimination before the and equipment at a time when the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. need could not be more acute.

Covid-19 in Lebanon Lebanon has focused its Covid-19 response on providing testing for Lebanon recorded its first case individuals who present symptoms, as of Covid-19 on 21 February 2020 well as conducting random community and went into partial lockdown testing. The government announced after three weeks, closing schools, that testing would be available to shutting its borders, and banning everyone for free at Rafik Al-Hariri new arrivals by air, land and sea. hospital, the country’s main public It also introduced restrictions on hospital, located in Beirut. While movement, only allowing people to resources in the state’s health system leave their houses to get essential dwindle, private facilities – which make goods or to perform some forms of up more than 80 per cent of the sector key work, including food production, in Lebanon – have been able to deploy agriculture and health care delivery. their resources and expand testing services successfully. For example, 187 the Lebanese American University one-third of those registered as hospital in the capital is running refugees live in informal settlements mobile clinics to provide testing for or ‘non-residential structures’, where it people living in remote areas. Another is common for more than one family private hospital has gone further and to live together in a single tent or unit. developed robots to facilitate Covid-19 Sharing living spaces with families testing to prevent health workers from is also a common practice among having direct contact with patients, refugees living in residential structures. thus reducing their risk of . Living in overcrowded conditions in However innovative and effective these residences, the risk posed to these measures may be, the cost of refugees sharply increases, particularly accessing the services is a barrier for for those who live in informal many in the country. One Covid-19 settlements. This is mainly because test from the private sector can cost access to sanitation facilities and between 100,000 and 200,000 adequate water is limited or lacking, Lebanese pounds, equivalent to US and following certain public health $66–130 before the devaluation of measures to prevent the spread of the the Lebanese pound. With the current virus, such as social distancing, hand economic crisis and unprecedented washing and self-isolation, has proven unemployment levels, purchasing to be nearly impossible. Unfortunately, a test is simply not an option for many. living conditions for most refugees Moreover, the health system response have dramatically deteriorated of late, to Covid-19 has failed to adequately with a survey by UNHCR indicating that incorporate the health needs of the number of Syrian refugees living in vulnerable groups, including refugees sub-standard conditions has increased and migrants, people living in poverty significantly. Many are seeking more and people living with disabilities.

Disproportionate risks and impacts for refugees

As in many other countries, refugees and migrants in Lebanon face higher risks of contracting Covid-19 for a number of reasons, including inadequate living According to UNHCR, there conditions, limited access to services and higher poverty levels. are more than 1 million Syrian refugees registered Housing conditions In alignment with Lebanese in Lebanon, though government policy, no formal refugee different agencies estimate camps have been established in Lebanon in response to the influx the true number to be in of Syrian refugees in 2011. Around the region of 1.5 million. Lebanon: For Syrian refugees, discrimination is the greatest barrier to accessing Covid-19 testing accessing Covid-19 to barrier discrimination is the greatest Syrian refugees, For Lebanon: affordable options, but this usually care. NGOs reported their inability to entails even poorer quality housing. deliver medication or provide medical consultations due to the outbreak Health care delivery response measures, putting many The way that health care is delivered vulnerable refugees with underlying to Syrian refugees is heavily influenced health conditions at additional risk. by where and in what setting refugees are staying in Lebanon. Generally, Socio-economic status basic health care for registered During crises, refugees and migrants refugees is subsidized and facilitated are among the first vulnerable groups by the UNHCR in Lebanon. Some to suffer job losses and health non-governmental organizations insecurity. Lebanon is no exception. (NGOs) also provide health care, either Even before the financial meltdown through their own established health in Lebanon, Syrian refugees had facilities or by subsidizing health care become more economically vulnerable. provided by the existing Lebanese They are permitted to work only public health facilities. In some in a limited number of low-skilled cases, NGOs also provided some jobs, and only if they are sponsored health services in camps, including by a Lebanese national; a 2019 health education and promotion. UNHCR assessment found that just a third of Syrian refugees had regular However, during the coronavirus employment while almost three-quarters outbreak, the imposed lockdown (73 per cent) lived in poverty. measures and the additional restrictions on Syrian refugees put in place by Besides being badly hit by the economic some municipalities have had a huge crisis, Syrians have faced further impact on their access to health hardship as a result of the restrictions on movement related to the Covid-19 response. Despite being regarded as essential work during the lockdown, jobs in agriculture and food production have not been accessible to refugees due to additional limitations on their movement imposed by local authorities, depriving many of an essential source of temporary income to meet their A 2019 assessment by basic needs. Refugees who, before UNHCR found that just the pandemic, were already making ends meet by cutting their expenditure a third of Syrian refugees on food, health and education, are had regular employment now struggling to survive in the face of further economic hardship. Recently, while almost three- humanitarian agencies have warned quarters (73 per cent) that the risks of starvation facing Syrian refugees in Lebanon could lived in poverty. even exceed the risks of Covid-19. 189

Barriers to refugees’ access permits, given the difficulties in securing to Covid-19 testing them, many are concerned that testing could put them at risk of harassment. While testing plays a central role in managing the spread of Covid-19, Marginalization Syrian refugees face considerable Refugees and migrants are often difficulties in accessing this service. the first to be stigmatized and are often These are rooted in their long-term unjustifiably blamed for spreading marginalization in the country, the viruses. A number of Lebanese local impacts of discriminatory treatment officials and even some civilians by local officials and a wider failure to have made the link, without evidence, communicate effectively with refugees between the outbreak and refugees. — a reflection of the government’s In a wider context of social exclusion, reluctance more generally to develop misinformation and anti-refugee a more inclusive approach to the sentiment have led to the introduction Syrian population in Lebanon. of discriminatory restrictions on Syrian refugees, especially those residing Unclear communication in rural areas and small towns. Some At the beginning of the outbreak, locals reported that they received it was unclear how Syrian refugees messages from their local council to could access coronavirus testing and report the arrival of any new Syrian treatment. The government announced family, on the suspicion they might that the test was available for free have fled from the camps to escape for everyone with coronavirus-like the spread of the virus. One local symptoms, without stating whether council even ordered residents not refugees were included in this service. to let available flats or houses to any Later in April, UNHCR stated that any refugees coming from outside the town. refugee who needed to access Covid-19 testing and treatment must first go Some even went further and performed through Ministry of Health screening ‘surveillance’ of refugees residing in via a hotline dedicated for this purpose. their areas, with activists reporting that After the screening, a referral to Rafik Al- a Syrian family was evicted after being Hariri hospital (the main public hospital suspected of contracting the virus. dealing with Covid-19 patients) might This came after the town’s pharmacist be possible, where the testing has been reported to the local council that a offered for free. Furthermore, UNHCR member of a Syrian family, a young announced that it would cover the cost boy, purchased paracetamol tablets for of treatment for Syrian refugees who his sick father. The family was evicted contract the virus, but only if they have from their home and was in danger passed the ministry’s screening. Yet of becoming homeless without even some refugees expressed their fears over being given the chance to check the seeking testing or treatment for a variety validity of the accusation or to perform of reasons. For example, it is unclear a coronavirus test. Unfortunately, this what type of information the ministry will behaviour could easily result in other collect through this screening process. refugees choosing in future to avoid As many refugees have been forced seeking medical help and treatment, to live in Lebanon without residency with life-threatening implications for Lebanon: For Syrian refugees, discrimination is the greatest barrier to accessing Covid-19 testing accessing Covid-19 to barrier discrimination is the greatest Syrian refugees, For Lebanon: vulnerable individuals and for the containing the spread of the virus country’s public health as a whole. across the country, the importance of a national response that is collective Discriminatory restrictions and inclusive is clear. This means it is on movement vital to ensure that everyone in Lebanon In addition, local authorities in some with Covid-19, including Syrian refugees, regions of the country have introduced can access testing and treatment. This further restrictions on the movement of will be difficult, however, until Syrian Syrian refugees that do not necessarily refugees can be sure of receiving these apply to Lebanese residents. According services free of charge and without to Human Rights Watch, at least 21 fear of being penalized for doing so. Lebanese municipalities have applied discriminatory restrictions on Syrian This will require a concerted effort refugees. For example, a municipality from the government to reverse the in Bekaa has allowed Syrian refugees long-standing marginalization of Syrian only four hours per day to leave their refugees in the country, as well as homes to perform essential tasks, a more positive engagement with while Lebanese residents are entitled communities. This should include more to much more time to perform the effective dissemination of accurate same tasks. The local council deems and relevant information regarding the these measures necessary in order prevention and transmission of Covid-19, to prevent the spread of Covid-19. while at the same time challenging broader misinformation that seeks to link However, tight restrictions on the refugees with the spread of the virus. movement of Syrian refugees, such Lebanese authorities will also need as curfews, existed even prior to the to address the underlying issues that Covid-19 outbreak and as a result put Syrian refugees at greater risk of of increasing social tensions and contracting the virus, from lack of water anti-Syrian sentiment in the country. and sanitation to overcrowding and Sadly, these practices have been inadequate housing. Any restrictions exacerbated during the coronavirus on the rights of refugees, such as pandemic. Many refugees have not curfew, should be legal, necessary, even been given the chance to escape proportionate and non-discriminatory, in overcrowding and seek better quality line with international human rights law. housing conditions. More broadly, a more effective Covid-19 Towards an inclusive public strategy will also require a move health response to Syrian towards a stronger rights-based refugees in Lebanon approach to the treatment of Syrian refugees in the country. Greater service The Covid-19 pandemic, like other provision, improved resources, better public health emergencies, has brought access to information and a wider move long-standing social inequalities away from discriminatory surveillance to the surface across the world — to inclusive support will not only help and Lebanon, with its large refugee protect vulnerable Syrian refugees population, is no exception. Simply from the threat of the virus, but also from the perspective of effectively benefit the country as a whole. 191 Editor’s preface: minorities, indigenous peoples and the right to culture www.minorityrights.org/trends2020

Find more case studies, multimedia stories and updated country profiles. 193 Editor’s preface: minorities, indigenous peoples and the right to culture Technology increasingly permeates every aspect of our lives, from the use of big data and information and communication technologies to artificial intelligence and automation. These developments are often framed around issues such as efficiency, speed and innovation, but for minorities, indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups there are often very different forces at play – the replication of existing patterns of exclusion in new forms.

With minorities and indigenous peoples disproportionately represented among the world’s poor, it is not surprising that poverty is itself a major barrier to these groups accessing mobile phones, computers and other technologies. The need for a more inclusive approach to technology is therefore more urgent than ever, with an emphasis not only on affordable pricing and accessible delivery, but also culturally appropriate and inclusive design.

Without concerted efforts to ensure they have positive outcomes for minorities and indigenous peoples, technologies could instead reinforce their exclusion. From biometric databanks to CCTV, surveillance is becoming more commonplace across the world, with deeply troubling implications for individual privacy, freedom of movement and other rights. When these technologies are actively mobilized to target certain communities, there is the possibility of systematic human rights violations on a scale rarely realized until now.

This volume explores the implications of technology for the future of minority and indigenous rights worldwide, and also highlights their potential to bring positive change. From citizen-led monitoring and reporting of human rights abuses in conflict zones to digital mapping of logging in communal forests, there is considerable opportunity for technologies to support land rights, secure justice and empower community members. However, human rights must be at the heart of how we manage and develop these technologies. For minorities, indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups, the potential to achieve greater equality and recognition could be huge – but only if they are able to participate fully in that process themselves.

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