| APrIGF 2022 Session Proposal Submission Form | |||||||||||||||
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| Part 1 - Lead Organizer | |||||||||||||||
| Contact Person | |||||||||||||||
| Debarati Das | |||||||||||||||
| Organization / Affiliation (Please state "Individual" if appropriate) * | |||||||||||||||
| Point of View | |||||||||||||||
| Designation | |||||||||||||||
| Co-Lead, Digital Security | |||||||||||||||
| Gender | |||||||||||||||
| Non-binary | |||||||||||||||
| Economy of Residence | |||||||||||||||
| India | |||||||||||||||
| Primary Stakeholder Group | |||||||||||||||
| Civil Society | |||||||||||||||
| List Your Organizing Partners (if any) | |||||||||||||||
| Name: Marwa Azelmat Organisation: Association for Progressive Communications Email: marwa@apcwomen.org |
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| Part 2 - Session Proposal | |||||||||||||||
| Session Title | |||||||||||||||
| Plurality of Voices Online: South Asian perspectives on women & gender minorities' freedom of expression | |||||||||||||||
| Session Format | |||||||||||||||
| Roundtable | |||||||||||||||
| Where do you plan to organize your session? | |||||||||||||||
| Online only (with onsite facilitator who will help with questions or comments from the floor) | |||||||||||||||
| Specific Issues for Discussion | |||||||||||||||
| The internet is not an equal space for free and safe expression for women, gender minorities, and people of intersecting and marginalised identities whose voices are structurally silenced. Various forces, including increased digital surveillance, biased AI, targeted attacks, and online GBV work to silence the voices of women and gender minorities online — this is especially true for those who have a significant online presence. Digital attacks on women human rights defenders and journalists in South Asia, including those who are marginalised by religion and caste, have taken a range of shapes and forms — from gendered disinformation and organised ‘trolling’ to non-consensually publishing their details on ‘auction’ apps. Such instances of online GBV are often normalised by platforms, who do not take timely accountability or proactively act on targeted abuse. The session will address what a people-centric internet could look like, where women and LGBTQIA+ people can express their voices freely. In the South Asian context, how do structural inequalities, gender norms and gendered barriers in terms of inaccess, privacy violations, surveillance, and binarised systems shape or limit one’s online expression? Do platforms enable this silencing — how can content moderation be more accountable and rights-respecting? The session will also explore what kind of people-centric policies are needed to alleviate inequalities of voices online, and how policies shape everyday experiences of ‘voice’ and ‘silencing’ online. | |||||||||||||||
| Describe the Relevance of Your Session to APrIGF | |||||||||||||||
| The session will focus on the primary track of ‘Inclusion’ — including the themes ‘diversity’ and ‘digital rights’ — and a secondary track ‘Trust’, including the theme of ‘freedom of expression’. The policed character of the digital environment of South Asia, by state and non-state actors, means that women, including human rights defenders and journalists, often have to face negative consequences for expressing their voices online. In the region, many human rights defenders were subjected to surveillance by spyware. Muslim women who are politically vocal and have a significant online presence were targeted and ‘mock-auctioned’ on apps. Queer persons experience specific GBVs like outing, doxxing, transphobic harassment, and increased surveillance online due to which many LGBTQIA+ persons have to devise their own strategies for safety, such as self-censorship of voice or removing themselves from social media. Queer persons with more digital presence experience more vulnerability online especially in countries where diverse genders and sexualities are criminalised or not recognised legally. The session will center such diverse perspectives around digital rights and freedom of expression, and enable an articulation of what it could mean to be able to express freely and have one’s voice heard online. Based on a roundtable discussion with the speakers and participants, the session will identify gaps in platform accountability and content moderation mechanisms, and also present concrete policy recommendations for safeguarding women and LGBTQIA+ people's freedom of expression online with an inclusive, intersectional and rights-centric approach. | |||||||||||||||
| Methodology / Agenda (Please add rows by clicking "+" on the right) | |||||||||||||||
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| Moderators & Speakers Info (Please complete where possible) | |||||||||||||||
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| Please explain the rationale for choosing each of the above contributors to the session. | |||||||||||||||
| Hija Kamran leads digital rights advocacy at Media Matters for Democracy in Pakistan, an organisation of journalists geared towards media development, digital democracy and rights, Media and Information Literacy (MIL), and Internet governance. Their activities include policy research, advocacy, and capacity interventions. Hija is also a digital rights specialist who has worked on key internet governance and privacy issues in the country. Subha Wijesiriwardena is a queer-feminist activist, researcher, and writer from Sri Lanka. She works with CREA, a global feminist human rights organization with a commitment to building more inclusive feminist movements. Subha's work is focused on digital rights, SRHR, queer and trans rights. Subha writes about gender, sexuality, tech, media and politics. Her research includes work on LGBT people and their internet use. She co-founded A Collective for Feminist Conversations, based out of Colombo: an online/on-ground platform for intergenerational, intersectional feminist dialogue. Shohini Banerjee is the Co-lead and Knowledge Specialist at Tech Sakhi, Point of View's digital information helpline for women and gender minorities. She has been an ardent global advocate for gender equality over the past seven years accumulating various experiences from direct support to survivors of sexual violence to conducting global policy research and advocacy. Marwa Azelmat is the Policy Advocacy Coordinator for APC's Women's Rights Programme. She offers extensive experience in policy advocacy work related to cyber policy issues, gendered policy making and good governance. |
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| Please declare if you have any potential conflict of interest with the Program Committee 2022. | |||||||||||||||
| No | |||||||||||||||
| Are you or other session contributors planning to apply for the APrIGF Fellowship Program 2022? | |||||||||||||||
| No | |||||||||||||||
| APrIGF offers live transcript in English for all sessions. Do you need any other translation support or any disability related requests for your session? APrIGF makes every effort to be a fully inclusive and accessible event, and will do the best to fulfill your needs. | |||||||||||||||
| If this session is recorded for future reference, we can consider having sign language interpretation and subtitles (will need to be added after download perhaps, from the live transcription). Having sign language interpretation is always a good practice but will also depend on if APrIGF has Deaf audiences attending. | |||||||||||||||
| Number of Attendees (Please fill in numbers) | |||||||||||||||
| Consent | |||||||||||||||
 I agree that my data can be submitted to forms.for.asia and processed by APrIGF organizers for the program selection of APrIGF 2022. |
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