It’s been a busy first quarter for the Alliance for Universal Digital Rights (AUDRi), with much of our time being taken up with preparing for our participation at RightsCon in Taipei, Taiwan, where we were thrilled to connect with so many allies in the digital rights space and get feedback from across the globe on our Digital Principles.
Equality Now, a founding member of AUDRi, also took part in the UN’s Commission for the Status of Women (#CSW69) in New York, where they made powerful statements at key events focusing on online abuse and TFGBV.
RightsCon served as a platform to gain insights and feedback from a diverse audience on our digital principles. Participants were given an opportunity to highlight the principles most relevant to their region, and the diversity of responses overall, with every principle being flagged in every region, reinforced our understanding that digital rights concerns are truly global in impact. This underscores the importance of regional and global consultation in developing relevant solutions and recommendations.
At CSW, Equality Now highlighted the importance of digital safety mechanisms in building a gender-just future. Global Executive Director S. Mona Sinha said:
“Digital misogyny is not just online hate—it is a systemic attack on women’s rights and democracy. We must hold tech companies accountable, strengthen survivor-centered laws, and ensure digital spaces are places of empowerment, not exclusion.”
AUDRi, in partnership with UN agencies and other civil society organizations, has long been working to ensure the UN Global Digital Compact includes considerations around gender equality and human rights. Together we achieved the inclusion of language to that effect, influenced by our digital principles, in this important guiding document that was adopted last year.
We now have our sights set on co-creating a digital rights scorecard rooted in our feminist-informed digital principles to measure countries’ implementation of protective measures and attention to a breadth of digital rights including freedom from tech-facilitated gender-based violence, freedom of expression, access to the internet, the impact on work and labor markets, environmental impact, women’s participation, ensuring protection from bias and discrimination, and the right to privacy.
As we develop this scorecard alongside our alliance members and other key stakeholders, we will also expand and deepen regional conversations, incorporating a range of issues that intersect and overlap with our work in the digital rights space.
Stay tuned for more information about how you can get involved with these, and for further details on the activities AUDRi has planned for the Internet Governance Forum in Norway in June, and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)+20 High-Level Event in Geneva in July.
And let us know if you will be there so we can make space to connect and collaborate!
