Please note that on our website we use cookies to enhance your experience, and for analytics purposes. To learn more about our cookies, please read our privacy policy. By clicking ‘Allow cookies’, you agree to our use of cookies. By clicking ‘Decline’, you don’t agree to our Privacy Policy.

No translations available

Minority and Indigenous Trends 2020: Focus on technology

While a central aim of the Sustainable Development Goals was to reduce social inequalities within societies, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted how profound the gap remains for minorities and indigenous peoples in many countries.

Summary and recommendations

  • 01
    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…

    1 min read

  • 02
    Foreword

    By 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…

    1 min read

  • 03
    Recommendations

    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…

    1 min read

  • 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 sideline 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 pandemic has highlighted how profound the gap remains for minorities and indigenous peoples in many countries. 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 aslimited information in minority or indigenous languages 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 their development. At present, however, minority and indigenous employment in sectors such as computing remains low. This poses a fundamental challenge to the creation of more diverse 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 Xinjiang, the Chinese government 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.

    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 governments, 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 climate change. 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, 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 left behind.

    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. 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, including violence, against them. But while social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have regularly been exploited by extremist and far-right groups to spread hate, they have also helped mobilize some of the most transformative civil rights movements in recent years. 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 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.

    Photo: Portrait of a Yazidi woman in Duhok, Iraqi Kurdistan / Younes Mohammad

  • By 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 random strangers being beaten to death on the suspicion that they are potential child-kidnappers or organ-snatchers, discriminated groups such as Muslims and Dalits have been especially targeted, particularly in relation to allegations of cow slaughter – an issue that has increasingly been used as a catalyst for attacks by right-wing Hindu nationalists.

    Typology of misinformation

    IIn order to better understand how WhatsApp and other social media messaging platforms are implicated in discriminatory mob violence, using funding from WhatsApp we conducted an independent qualitative study in four large states of India between November 2018 and August 2019. As part of this study, we interacted with nearly 300 WhatsApp users from a wide range of backgrounds: men and women aged between 18 and 50, in both rural and urban areas, from upper and lower castes, and including Hindus, Muslims and Adivasis with a variety of political beliefs and occupations. We also studied more than 1,000 WhatsApp anonymized messages that were typically shared in WhatsApp groups.

    Based on this review, we developed a typology of violence-fuelling misinformation that is most commonly received and shared by Indian WhatsApp users. The categories include:

    • Overwhelming content: still and moving images of incidents from across the world, shared without context, each displaying something spectacular — an execution, an accident, a child getting beaten up, a natural disaster, fires and so on — to engage users by imparting a sense of shock. This content also serves the function of establishing a WhatsApp group as a significant channel of information unavailable in mainstream broadcast and print media, where graphic violence is generally not shown.
    • Nationalism and ethno-religious bigotry: these messages are conspiratorial, drawing on a wide number of established stereotypes and prejudices against minority populations. They often build on negative propaganda featured in mainstream outlets, such as anxieties around population growth among poor and minority populations, conspiracy theories about the forced conversion of disenfranchised Hindus to Christianity, smear campaigns aimed at opposition politicians, and other narratives aiming to incite hostility towards particular groups or individuals.
    • Miscellaneous: this includes festival-related greetings, videos of animals, television clips from talent shows and news programmes, public events, humorous clips from India and across the world (including content imported from other platforms such as YouTube and TikTok) and other material. Though seemingly innocuous, these snippets function to sustain the impression of a constant ‘flow’ of information and to build the profile, brand and legitimacy of users who pass on other kinds of misinformation.
    • Gendered content: as in many other areas, WhatsApp usage in India continues to be highly gendered. Women across age, religion, class and caste do not have unrestricted access to mobile phones, and their use is often closely monitored and controlled by their husbands, brothers, fathers or other male relatives. Young women who do use social media frequently experience messages threatening them with devastating physical and symbolic violence, including rape, harassment and the public sharing of personal information to intimidate them into silence. Frequently, incidents of online harassment result in a vicious circle, where families and communities blame the women for attracting these attacks.

    A recurrent trope that has recently emerged is reports — usually a short video or an image with a voiceover — of child-kidnapping ‘gangs’ or an individual kidnapper allegedly doing the rounds in or around a community. Since 2017, when the frequency of these attacks dramatically increased, dozens of people have been lynched on the suspicion that they are child-kidnappers. Usually, in South Indian states the ‘stranger’ is described as being from North India and vice versa. More recently, the same misinformation is being shared with the putative strangers now being described as Rohingya Muslim refugees, thus playing into the government’s strategic generation of fear and loathing of outsiders in the wake of its National Register of Citizens initiative.

    User motivations

    A significant section of WhatsApp users expressed fatigue with the volume of WhatsApp messages received in a single day. They were members of several groups formed on the basis of family, friendship, neighbourhood, caste, religion, political party and occupation. Users were part of most of these networks offline and active online participation cemented their credibility and membership in the offline world. It mattered to users that they be seen as active, knowing WhatsApp participants in specific groups.

    Some users — particularly those over 25 — categorized messages on the basis of sender-credibility. Younger users, on the other hand, were more sceptical about the accuracy of the messages because of enhanced functional media literacy. If a video message was edited heavily, for instance, they were able to spot the places where the video had been altered and were suspicious of its authenticity — although this did not always lead them to reject the message or to report it. Most users suspended their scepticism during politically charged moments such as cross-border conflict and general elections, or regarding news of child-kidnappings. During such occasions, users reported that they forwarded messages out of an assumed sense of civic duty, and out of loyalty to family or communal ties that have historic roots. That these ties were often caste-based, partisan and led to the spread of misinformation was less important to them than displaying adequate nationalist or communal fervour at a fraught moment. Another finding was that, contrary to popular belief, users with little or no digital and media literacy played a minimal role in the spread of misinformation. A very small number would receive and forward misinformation uncritically. However, it was primarily upper-caste privileged men, and some women connected to them, with high levels of functional media literacy and class capital, who were involved both in producing this content and creating the networks to disseminate it to others.

    Inadequate state response

    The increasing use of media platforms such as WhatsApp to harass citizens who dissent from the ruling party agenda and its nationalistic ideology has been enabled by impunity. Not only have the police and security forces failed to prevent the spread of misinformation but there is also evidence that a significant portion 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 case is currently being heard by the Supreme Court of India. However, given that far-right and nationalist groups continue to disseminate misinformation with impunity on public platforms such as Facebook, ending encryption is unlikely in itself to resolve the problem of online incitement.

    Furthermore, human rights activists have expressed concern that the government could exploit such a move to monitor and repress political opponents and dissenters, rather than curb hate speech against minorities and other marginalized groups. For instance, the district-level administration in different parts of the country has arbitrarily placed restrictions on WhatsApp usage during sensitive periods. For example, in the districts of Kargil and Leh, internet access was restored in December 2019 after a five-month internet shutdown in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. With the restoration of internet services, the district administration has demanded that all administrators of WhatsApp groups are required to register themselves with the district administration, with strict orders that they will be held responsible for any content circulated on these WhatsApp groups.

    The cover of Indian magazin ‘India Today’ with the headline ‘The Weaponisation of WhatsApp’ / Nick Kaiser/dpa/Alamy

    This has taken place against the backdrop of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s growing authoritarianism, particularly towards Muslims and democratic dissenters. The erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir and the state of Uttar Pradesh, both states with large Muslim populations, have faced large-scale violence and the imposition of curfews, internet shutdowns and police aggression against protesters. In late 2019, the central government passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (which came into operation on 10 January 2020), providing citizenship to persecuted minorities of different religions from neighbouring countries except Muslims. In addition, the central government has also allocated budgets for undertaking the National Population Registry that seeks to identify ‘valid’ citizens on the basis of identity documents. There seems to be little doubt that the Citizenship Amendment Act, in conjunction with the National Population Register and National Register of Citizens, could be used to label vulnerable Muslims as foreigners or illegal ‘infiltrators’. Facing popular protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act throughout the country, the BJP and the larger family of Hindutva organizations have resorted to using WhatsApp to incite anti-Muslim hatred among its supporters.

    Even as the central government has weaponized its administrative and military powers against Muslims, especially in Kashmir, the same officials have claimed that encryption prevents them from acting against those spreading misinformation. It is difficult to believe this argument is made in good faith, given the lamentable track record of the government and security agencies to tackle hate speech on public social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. In spite of repeated complaints by Dalit activists, feminists, journalists, human rights activists, students, academics and many others, no action has been taken by those who perpetrate death threats, sexual harassment and other forms of abuse. Given that both technology companies and law enforcement agencies have failed to act against hate speech on open platforms, it is doubtful that the removal of encryption will result in any action.

    Towards real change

    Vigilante violence is linked to specific typologies of misinformation produced, shared by and targeted against specific social groups, along the lines of caste, indigeneity, class, religion, gender, sexuality, language and ethnicity. This violent social structure should be taken as the broad context in which applications such as WhatsApp are used. WhatsApp usage further intensifies this violence in specific mediated ways. Motivations of users are important since users have diverse ways to justify misinformation that range from suspension of disbelief to civic duty and nationalism. Such ideological articulations are or should be contested in order to transform the conditions under which social interactions are imagined and acted upon.

    Unfortunately, mainstream thinking on curbing misinformation has been restricted to purely technical solutions, such as possibly removing encryption and investment in functional media literacy. However, misinformation and subsequent vigilante violence need to be curbed through a critical understanding of broader socio-political contexts. Interventions such as promoting a stronger media literacy around the politics of representation and power, as well as cross-stakeholder cooperation to act on hate speech, would be important steps towards real change.

    * More details of the research project and its findings are available in S. Banaji and R. Bhat, WhatsApp Vigilantes: An Exploration of Citizen Reception and Circulation of WhatsApp Misinformation Linked to Mob Violence in India, LSE, 2019. 

    Photo: A man holds a placard that reads ‘stop attacking minorities’ during a protest against mob lynching. Kolkata, India / SOPA Images Limited/Alamy

  • 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.

    • 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.
    • Promote a diverse and expansive approach to technology development that enables the creation of a wide range of products suitable for different communities.
    • Ensure accountability and independent oversight.
    • Establish and enforce clear protocols on the collection, retention and use of personal data by governments, companies and other actors.
    • Abstain from imposing blanket internet shutdowns in the name of security, especially for protracted periods.
    • Focus on improving minority and indigenous inclusion, not only as end users of technologies, but also upstream in their design and production.
    • Conduct human rights impact assessments as a necessary first step whenever digital technologies are being considered for adoption by public authorities.
    • Scrutinize the use of AI and automation in decision-making, with a focus on ensuring transparency and non-discrimination.
    • 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.

    Businesses

    • Recognize that they have a responsibility to respect human rights and apply the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
    • Establish clear and transparent protocols for content posted on social media platforms, especially concerning hate speech.

    Photo: Portrait of an Oromo man in Sheikh Hussein shrine in Oromia, Ethiopia / Eric Lafforgue/Alamy.

Thematic chapters

  • The threats of technology to minority and indigenous rights

    The global ‘digital divide’ continues to prevent minorities and indigenous peoples from accessing the internet.

  • Empowering minorities and indigenous peoples through tech

    Advances in technology are revolutionizing the way communities and advocates are working to realize indigenous and minority rights.

  • The challenges of technology and sustainable development

    While technological advances have been linked to patterns of destructive unsustainable development, including the direct impacts of mining.

Africa

  • 01
    Cameroon: Confronting environmental injustice and illegal logging in the rainforest through indigenous-led technology

    By Simon Hoyte 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…

    1 min read

  • 02
    Democratic Republic of Congo: As global demand for cobalt soars, child miners pay the price

    By 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 journalist and explorer, Sir Henry Morton Stanley. Stanley returned in…

    1 min read

  • 03
    Kenya: For Turkana pastoralists struggling with drought, mobile finance offers a lifeline

    By Hamimu Masudi 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…

    1 min read

  • 04
    Tanzania: For people with albinism, hate speech and discrimination have moved online

    By Hamimu Masudi 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…

    1 min read

  • By Simon Hoyte

    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 contradiction of forest conservation in Central Africa: that those who interact most intimately with the forest and hold the necessary knowledge to sustain it are almost entirely excluded from contributing. The entirety of Cameroon’s forest estate is under government ownership, with more than a third allocated as private logging concessions and most of the remainder annexed as people-free wildlife reserves. Such zoning has forcibly evicted indigenous Baka communities from their ancestral forests to roadsides, leading to widespread exclusion from the forest resources which the Baka rely upon not only for subsistence and medicine, but also as the basis of their worldview, identity and spiritual beliefs.

    Baka are one of Central Africa’s indigenous hunter-gatherer communities, surviving entirely within the rainforests shared between Cameroon, Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville. Alongside the San population of southern Africa, they are one of humanity’s oldest contemporary peoples and have consequently accumulated an incredibly intricate ecological knowledge of these forests. This is most apparent through their language — for example, Baka have over 28 words to describe elephants, depending on their age, sex, health and relationship to both other elephants and humans, as well as 19 words for gorilla. There is a specific word for the time, in the late afternoon, when honeybees leave their hive and search for nectar in the forest (mòngombe), and for the noise of honeybees early in the morning (màkelo). One Baka village has cited 624 different species of medicinal plants and 580 plants on which they rely for sustenance. Elders and youths alike have sophisticated spatial knowledge of where these plants grow and where animal species congregate, and at what specific times of the year. Such knowledge is not held in isolation from the forest but relies on constant interaction: after all, the best way to find wild safa yams is by following the calls of the sangòngò bird.

    Credit: Simon Hoyte.

    When it comes to protecting the forest from wildlife crime and deforestation, a legacy of French colonial management with overarching power renders indigenous knowledge inferior to that of ‘experts’ and the state. Interestingly, the problem locally is often not that the Baka are not considered part of the forest, but the opposite: as forest dwellers, they are regarded as being too poorly educated or ‘lazy’ to meaningfully take part in forest conservation. With studies showing that indigenous-led conservation is equally or more effective at safeguarding biodiversity than that led by outsiders, and that exclusion is more likely to drive communities into illegal activities, it is unfortunate that conservation authorities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in this region still largely practise such ‘conservation from above’.

    If forest managers sat and listened to Baka voices, they would quickly hear: ‘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.’ The design of mainstream conservation models inhibits Baka involvement because they rely on high levels of literacy and pre-designed, expensive missions. But participative technology is changing this.

    To take action on community concerns, participative mapping projects have been launched with eight communities in collaboration with the Extreme Citizen Science group (ExCiteS) based at University College London. Mapping has emerged as a powerful way to connect indigenous knowledge and values with decision-makers who might otherwise ignore or struggle to interact with them. If the process of mapping is done in an inclusive manner, whereby communities are involved in what to map and why, it can serve as a significant tool for empowerment.

    Government hunting restrictions imposed on the Baka made communities initially wary of the project: ‘Will the technology tell us what we can and can’t hunt?’, one community member asked. But by prioritizing the communities’ concerns and leadership, it quickly became clear to all that they themselves are in control of what the technology is used for. The smartphone software developed by ExCiteS, Sapelli, enables this through a process of ‘co-design’. Not only is the concept of the project informed by local concerns, but the physical design of the user interface is led by community members. Icons are used instead of text so that barriers of illiteracy are overcome. Because being invited to participate is so rare, there is often surprise, and even a great deal of laughter, when it is recommended that participants draw icons themselves, whether it be in a notebook, using a stick to draw on the ground or making animal prints in the mud. While the process builds trust with community members, most importantly it ensures that icons are locally relevant and distinguishable, and creates a sense of ownership: in the words of Monjombe*, a Baka elder, ‘All our hearts are in it.’ On seeing their own icons in the Sapelli smartphone app for the first time, there can be disbelief and excitement that they have co-created this technology.

    Deciding on what to include together creates a space for the community to decide on their priorities and suggest innovative ideas to achieve them. In one meeting, an elder asked if they could also use the phone to monitor animals in order to produce a map of their distribution. This idea was subsequently shared with other communities, all of which decided that they too would like to monitor animals. Going against widespread bad practice, a community protocol is formed by each community on how exactly the data will be collected, who it will be shared with and, most importantly, what it will be used for. Unintended negative outcomes from the data collection must be discussed and mitigated through each community’s protocol. One community member, for example, expressed his concerns about how the data could be co-opted by officials with their own agenda: ‘I am worried that if we map interesting animals the authorities will expand the park.’

    Most communities decided they wanted to make reports of wildlife crime, such as poachers’ shelters, gun cartridges and killed animals, but this renders them at risk from reprisals, as one community pointed out: ‘Such a project could put us in serious trouble with the Bantus [the dominant local group]’ and ‘When the information is sent, how do you keep us secure?’ As a result, multiple security techniques were established, including anonymizing the users through a colour ID system. The posing of these sorts of questions is a good indication that the community has understood the potential risks of the project — an important part of the free, prior and informed consent process. Feeling satisfied after this process, a Baka man said: ‘What we could not openly speak about, we can now report.’

    Physically handling smartphones and practising the creation of audio clips and photos — the first time many had heard their own voice or seen themselves in a photo — proved to be an empowering experience even before any data had been collected. Baka are not regarded as trustworthy by forest managers, as confirmed by the responses of NGOs and government officials to the project team members: ‘They will steal and sell the phones!’ Such attitudes have been a major barrier for Baka to access these technologies until the project began.

    Challenges such as charging the devices and preventing damage are easily solved with portable solar chargers and by choosing rugged, waterproof phones. Community elders often have highly callused fingers, an impediment to using the phone’s touchscreen, but this has been overcome through light-hearted sessions of testing the use of knuckles or noses as a replacement. After taking a report, audio clip and photo using Sapelli, the data is stored on the phone until it can send to a secure database. Sapelli exploits pockets of mobile network in the forest by attempting to send the data by mobile internet and SMS every five minutes.

    When data is received by members of the ExCiteS team, community protocols are consulted. Most often, wildlife crime data is accumulated on an online map, which reveals hotspots across the landscape and provides local knowledge on the realities of the wildlife trade. Animal monitoring data, usually in the form of recorded footprints, gorilla nests, chimpanzee cries, pangolin burrows or elephant paths, is added to the map and utilized for more efficient conservation planning. 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. This is changing things on the ground – some villages see more wildlife and fewer traffickers, and all have experienced a sense of empowerment. In the words of Kelepa, a Baka community member: ‘It shows our ability to work, to be part of it and show we are not lazy.’ However, these technological solutions can only achieve so much in a context where corruption, poor governance and discrimination remain pervasive. It is to be hoped that this wealth of data can support more systemic change, particularly in the form of land and access rights for the Baka.

    *All the names in this case study have been changed to protect the anonymity of respondents.

    Photo: A Baka community member using the Sapelli app to monitor animal species in their forests / Simon Hoyte

  • By 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 journalist 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 has repeatedly suffered plunder, civil unrest and the most egregious forms of human rights abuses — much of which is linked to the struggle to control its wealth of metals, minerals and forests.

    When rubber became a key raw material in the manufacture of tyres, the country became the world’s largest producer, supplying European factories throughout the second industrial revolution — but this came with a heavy toll for local communities, who were subjected to forced labour, displacement and other atrocities. Later on, the uranium used to produce the bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War was mined in the DRC.

    Now, as we transition from cars with internal combustion engines to the new generation of electric vehicles (EVs), the DRC again finds itself bearing the human cost of the latest technology. Some 60 per cent of the world’s supply of cobalt — a mineral widely used in the batteries that power EVs, as well as such tech devices as smartphones, tablets and laptops — comes from the DRC, with much of this production concentrated in what was formerly known as Katanga province, a resource-rich region in the south of the country that has nevertheless struggled with widespread poverty and intermittent outbreaks of inter-ethnic violence. In particular, the mining industry has attracted many migrant labourers, adding to potential tensions. Indeed, many have typically come from the Kasai region, which has itself recently borne the brunt of massive displacement.

    This mining hub has also become the site of an ongoing human rights crisis linked directly to its natural resources. Children as young as 10 years old are reported to be digging in trenches, labouring in rivers, sifting and sorting the mineral and carrying sacks of ore heavier than their own body weight. Even those too young to work themselves are forced to spend the entire day in mining sites with their mothers, breathing in toxic fumes.

    Research by Amnesty International and African Resource Watch (Afrewatch) in 2016 confirmed that chronic exposure 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, the International Labour Organization (ILO) Committee of Experts reviewing the DRC’s adherence to the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (ILO No. 182, 1999) called on the government to intensify its efforts in preventing children from working in mines and ensuring that thorough investigations and prosecutions of offenders are carried out, with adequate penalties imposed.

    However, the chain of culpability extends beyond the DRC itself to the large global multinationals which trade, purchase or use cobalt. Given limited regulation, cobalt mined by children can change hands at local markets from Congolese artisanal miners to international brokers, ending up in a laptop or an EV thousands of miles away. Among the largest international companies listed in this trade is Congo Dongfang Mining International (CDM), a subsidiary of Chinese-based Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Company, and the Swiss mining giant Glencore. Both corporations then sell it on for processing before it is then bought by manufacturers of EVs, mobile devices and other technologies.

    Both companies were named, though not included as defendants, in a landmark legal case filed in the United States (US) on 17 December 2019 by the human rights law firm International Rights Advocates on behalf of 14 parents and children from the DRC against the electric car manufacturer Tesla and a number of technology giants — including Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Dell and Microsoft — for reparations and rehabilitation on account of forced labour. The parents state that some of the children had been killed in tunnel collapses while others had been paralysed or suffered life-altering injuries from accidents. In the case, the plaintiffs are also seeking compensation 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 increases. As countries work towards fulfilling their commitments under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, as well as more specific initiatives such as the 2015 Declaration on Electro-Mobility and Climate Change and Call to Action, demand for EVs — and therefore cobalt — is rising. Indeed, global demand for cobalt has already tripled in the past five years. In line with this trend, market analysts estimate that, worldwide, car companies will sell around 2.5 million electric passenger vehicles in 2020, 20 per cent more than in 2019.

    While this could bring considerable environmental benefits, the increase in EV production could have a corresponding impact on child labour in the DRC. Unless safeguards are built into cobalt supply chains — starting from local artisanal mines, and all the way to consumers purchasing cobalt-containing vehicles — thousands of children will continue to suffer exploitation, abuse and the risk of injury or death. If so, then the DRC will yet again bear the burden of global demand for its resources. This means more human suffering and environmental destruction so that more affluent countries can benefit from new technologies, while its own population continues to experience some of the lowest levels of development in the world.

    Photo: Children pass an enormous mining slag heap of copper and cobalt that is being processed by a Belgian-Congolese-American joint venture. Lubumbashi, Haut Katanga, Democratic Republic of Congo /  JB Russell/Panos

  • By Hamimu Masudi

    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 region has been experiencing more frequent and severe drought conditions, linked to climate change, making it a humanitarian hotspot and a regular recipient of relief aid. For instance, in 2011 the region experienced what was described by the UN as ‘the worst drought in over half a century’, exposing more than 3.5 million 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 livestock loss and displacement.

    Although food aid has made up the bulk of emergency responses to crises such as those faced by Turkana, unconditional cash grants have become an important element in responding to both slow and rapid onset emergencies in recent times. As well as their flexibility, unconditional grants also allow beneficiaries to choose where they allocate their resources and what needs they consider most pressing. Best of all, with the proliferation of mobile telecommunications services such as M-PESA, a mobile banking platform owned by Kenya’s Safaricom communications, this form of disaster response management can now happen in real time.

    In partnership with Safaricom telecommunications, the Kenya Red Cross Society is one of the many humanitarian aid organizations that has successfully adopted and mainstreamed the use of mobile technologies to transfer unconditional grants in emergency situations. The charity, which is widely accepted as a first responder in humanitarian crises, reported in 2017 that it had given a monthly grant of over 3,000 Kenyan Shillings to more than 41,000 drought-affected families (nearly 250,000 people) over a period of three months through the M-PESA mobile platform.

    The digital transfer facility is user friendly, fast and affordable, and does not require relief aid recipients to hold a bank account: eligible community members only need to register their M-PESA phone numbers with the Kenya Red Cross Society. Once the charity has sent the grants into the ‘mobile wallets’ of eligible beneficiaries, the recipients can make digital payments for goods and services or they can withdraw physical cash at the nearest licensed M-PESA agent — the other component within the transfer cycle.

    For humanitarian agencies as well as disaster-prone communities living in hard-to-reach locations, the transfer of grants via mobile technology has been a game changer in responding to emergency situations such as droughts. What is striking is that this has been achieved through partnerships between humanitarian agencies, telecommunication companies and commercial banks — an approach that appears to be increasingly common in the humanitarian sector.

    This was best exemplified during the Turkana food crisis of 2011. In an innovative joint campaign led by Safaricom Foundation, Kenya Red Cross Society, Kenya Commercial Bank and Gina Din Corporate Communications, over 700 million Kenyan Shillings (approximately US$6.5 million) was raised in cash and a further 300 million Kenyan Shillings (US$2.8 million) in kind for the drought-affected Turkana communities. The campaign, which was branded ‘Kenyans for Kenya’ (K4K), used M-PESA and social media platforms to raise funds by attracting individual donors to aggregate their contributions towards the emergency response in Turkana. The K4K campaign subsequently won Kenya’s top award in the Not for Profit Campaign of the Year.

    For Turkana pastoralists, who face a long history of discrimination, inter-ethnic violence and further challenges related to the burgeoning oil industry in the region, a lasting solution to the social and environmental pressures on their traditional culture and livelihoods will need to extend beyond the immediate response to droughts, conflicts and other humanitarian emergencies. Nevertheless, given the serious threat of famine and displacement associated with these crises, mobile technologies offer a vital lifeline to these communities when they need it most — and, in the longer term, the possibility of lasting change.

    Photo: Etukoit, a Turkana woman with a child, walks out of her homestead. Turkana District, Kenya / Frédéric Courbet.

  • By Hamimu Masudi

    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 based in Tanzania, only half of children with albinism complete primary education and just 1 in 10 transition to secondary school.

    In the worst case scenario, people with albinism may even be at risk of human sacrifice. This grisly practice, rooted in widespread superstitions that the body parts of people with albinism have magical powers, is thought to have claimed nearly 80 people’s lives since 2000, with many others subjected to violent attacks. The majority of victims are children. According to the United Nations, ritual attacks against the community have been fuelled by fortune seekers, with victims kidnapped and their bodies dismembered by hired killers. After an upsurge in murders, the government of Tanzania weighed in to avert the terrible impact of such superstitions and banned witch doctors, the suspected culprits. However, people with albinism continue to live in fear and suffer deep-seated prejudice throughout their lives. Born in 1998 with albinism, Emmanuel Silas Shadrack is no stranger to discrimination. Yet against all the odds, Emmanuel — who is also a music artist known by the stage name Mr Tiger — has risen from obscurity to become a well-known figure in Tanzania, following his inauguration as the first Mr Albinism East Africa in December 2018. ‘After an intense competition, all the way from my home town of Geita in north-western Tanzania to Nairobi, Kenya, I was declared Mr Albinism East Africa,’ he recalls. ‘I was overwhelmed and I remember returning back home, and at the border crossing with Kenya, I received special attention — that is unaccustomed to people with albinism, like myself. On this occasion, my status had raised, after the whole world watched me on TV and social media.’

    As a result of his win, Emmanuel saw a surge in the number of followers and likes on his social media accounts. ‘During the contest I received a lot of positive comments [on social media accounts] wishing me good luck. And this increased several fold after I won the contest. I had to show gratitude and took time to respond to each and every comment, thanking my fans for the support, as much as I could’, he added.

    The youngest of a family of five, Emmanuel’s mother passed away early in his life, and together with his other siblings he was raised by his father. As a child with albinism, the challenges he faced were considerable. In 2008, for instance, his father had to make the difficult decision to move house to a safer neighbourhood after he survived an abduction attempt.

    ‘It was tough for me, because I grew up during the time people with albinism were being hunted for the trade in our body parts. I was in class three when the issue became widespread and I could see that my own community was keeping a distance from me. No one wanted to be seen closer to me at any time because they didn’t wish to be suspects or witnesses, in case I was abducted. They would hold community meetings over me and put pressure on my dad to remove me from the locality or hand me in to police for protection. It was about their safety, not mine.’

    Portrait of Emmanuel Silas Shadrack, a music artist and the first Mr. Albinism East Africa.

    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 challenge, due to the long distance between home and school. I always arrived late for classes since, unlike the other school-going children, I couldn’t leave home for school until it was 6.30 a.m., in the safety of broad daylight. There was a lot of bullying and name calling in school, plus there were no viewing aids to support my poor vision. The school teachers were equally not understanding of my situation and subjected me to severe punishments every time I arrived late for classes. Eventually, with consent from my dad, I abandoned my education and stayed under the safety of my home and family.’

    In addition to cracking down on the killings, the government of Tanzania has built schools and protection shelters for children with albinism in hotspot zones. However, Emmanuel does not think people with albinism are out of danger yet. ‘We have been thrown a lifeline, but as long as the prejudice, stigma and discrimination carry on, it will count for nothing. We still feel, under the cover of darkness, we can get hurt because the social attitudes that fuelled the first wave of abductions are still in place. After years of neglect and being regarded as wicked, we are still traumatized. The general public and a great number among us [the people with albinism community] are still ignorant of albinism and that explains why the majority are not in school; why sun screens and viewing aids are not available to people with albinism; and why skin cancer continues to eat up people with albinism. We are still being called “ghosts” and all sorts of degrading remarks on the streets and in our communities.’

    Although digital platforms and mobile technologies have grown exponentially in Africa, thereby stretching further the limits of human interactions, this is not necessarily the case for people with albinism. According to Emmanuel, the abuse, name calling and stalking that people with albinism experience on the streets has gone online too, unabated. Given the fact that cyber-hate crime monitoring is yet to be mainstreamed as a way of identifying and reporting the existence and scale of the problem, Emmanuel’s experience is no doubt common.

    As an albinism ambassador, he spends a lot of time online. He reveals that, although it is difficult to determine how prevalent it is, online abuse targeting people with albinism is persistent. ‘I am very fortunate that I have come this far in life and to be appointed Mr Albinism East Africa, [that] exposed me and built my confidence to engage on all platforms and earn the respect of the public. But not all people with albinism are as lucky. We still go through a lot of stereotypical and veiled attacks on a daily basis, whether on or offline. Because people with albinism [are] a deprived group, we rarely engage online but when we do, we are “greeted” by the same offline debasing remarks.’

    As people with albinism are still regularly targeted with hate speech, their main recourse is to attempt to block perpetrators on an individual basis or conceal their identity. ‘As a coping mechanism, you can delete the entire post that has received a cruel comment and post afresh, or if it’s a sustained attack, you block the account. Other times, for fear of being targeted, people with albinism will simply not use photos of themselves on social media. Instead photos of objects like vehicles, mountains, memes or animals will be used. That way you remain anonymous and won’t attract the attention of hateful people.’

    Emmanuel argues that the situation of people with albinism in Tanzania will only begin to change once the long-standing myths around albinism are successfully dismantled, a caring environment is created and equal opportunities are extended to all. As a music artist, he wants to see people with albinism making it in the music industry — not on the basis of singing about albinism but on conventional issues such as relationships, love and conscience. That, he believes, will boost the self-esteem of people with albinism and the public perception of them will change, too. To this end, Emmanuel dreams of starting a music group of East African artists he competed with at the regional Mr and Ms Albinism contest in Nairobi.

Americas

  • 01
    Central America: For migrants crossing national borders or connecting across ‘the wall’, communication technologies play a vital role

    By Michele F. Ferris Dobles 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…

    1 min read

  • 02
    Ecuador: Indigenous activists are finding ways to use technology to secure their rights – but barriers remain

    By 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…

    1 min read

  • 03
    United States: Equitable smart city design in San Francisco

    By 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…

    1 min read

  • 04
    United States: ‘If we continue to place our own individuality at the centre of our existence we will collapse on ourselves’

    By Alicia Kroemer James Walkingstick is a young activist from the Cherokee Nation, currently working, alongside his social anthropology studies at Harvard University, as a board member for LEAD Agency (Local Environmental Action Demanded,…

    1 min read

  • By Michele F. Ferris Dobles

    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 located between continental North America and South America, is composed of seven countries: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. A particularity of this region is that it presents very dense migratory flows – in fact, it is the largest migratory corridor in the world – with many heading to the US: some 3.5 million Central American immigrants are now estimated to be residing in the country. Large-scale migration began in the region in the 1970s and 1980s, during a period of widespread political uprisings and civil wars, continuing into the 1990s and 2000s as a result of violence and structural problems, including limited access to public services such as education, high unemployment and poverty. Central America also has some of the highest murder rates and number of gangs in the world, as well as deep social inequality and corruption, crucial factors that deepen social exclusion and drive people’s decision to migrate.

    Despite the fact that Central Americans are fleeing extreme situations of violence, they are still considered ‘economic migrants’ by the Mexican and US governments: this means they are categorized as migrating for economic purposes and not for survival, which makes it extremely difficult for them to apply for asylum and refugee status. This situation leaves them highly vulnerable as, without legal resources or protection, they are targeted by both authorities and criminal organizations. In this context ICTs take on a particular significance, enabling migrants to exchange messages and receive vital information as a means of avoiding deportation and other dangerous situations. In addition, given their very limited opportunities for securing refugee status or residency in the US, Central American immigrants are not in a position to visit their home countries – a condition that makes mediated relations and communication through technology essential for fostering family bonds across space and national borders.

    At every stage of the migration process, from the journey itself to the everyday difficulties of life as an undocumented immigrant, technologies play a central role. For migrants themselves, the benefits and challenges go hand in hand, offering valuable sources of information and social support while also putting them at even greater risk of surveillance, deportation and criminal violence.

    Surviving the journey

    The social and collective organization of transnational migration has changed profoundly with the advance of ICTs. One of the most striking and widely publicized instances of this is lascaravanas migrantes, the so-called ‘migrant caravans’ that dominated headlines in US media in 2018 and were frequently invoked by President Donald Trump as a national security threat. Comprising thousands of men, women and children from Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, the caravans primarily relied on mobile phones and applications such as WhatsApp to enable migrants making the long journey across Central America to the US to achieve safety in numbers and avoid the depredations of criminal gangs along the way. The caravans also served as a means to highlight the reality of families and communities displaced by protracted violence in their countries of origin: though grossly misrepresented by certain media outlets and vilified by right-wing politicians within the US, they nevertheless succeeded in attracting global coverage and increasing international awareness of their plight.

    More generally, ICTs have amplified and intensified the ways people communicate, interact and organize across national borders. This situation, while bringing many benefits for people on the move, has also created greater demands and expectations within migrant networks, at times provoking feelings of stress and anxiety around the need to be constantly available through these technologies. In this manner, faster and more frequent connectivity does not necessarily make transnational migration an easier or less painful experience. It is crucial to remain critical about the effects of ICTs, as the challenges of separation that many migrants face are not automatically alleviated by smartphones and social media.

    Another important change that ICTs have brought to the traditional patterns and trends of migration is how they can shape, in real time, the migratory journey itself. Smartphones are locative and portable media: this means that, besides enabling connectivity and communication with friends and family, they are useful tools for navigation and information sharing during transit. This has meant that established migration pathways have now been redirected to follow paths of connectivity, with migrants favouring travel through areas where they can access an internet connection. In the process, every aspect of their journey has been transformed, from the physical routes they take to the ways they spend their money.

    Through their smartphones, migrants have never had so much information at their fingertips, but at the same time they have never been so exposed to so much surveillance. In this regard, it is important to recognize that having access to a mobile phone and connectivity does not necessarily make the migrant journey easier, particularly as others have also been quick to exploit these technologies for their own gain. For Central American migrants making the hazardous journey through Mexican territory, the threat of kidnapping and torture by organized criminal gangs is exacerbated by the collusion of corrupt police officials: when apprehended by gangs or the authorities, migrants are frequently asked to hand over their mobile phone in order to call family members in Central America, who are then coerced into sending money to secure their loved one’s release.

    Thus, while providing many benefits, mobile phones also pose new dangers for migrants. Once in the US too, these technologies can prove double-edged — offering a vital line of contact to the families and friends in their countries of origin, but at the same time increasingly coopted by migration agencies as a tool of coercion.

    Life in the US as an undocumented migrant

    Two migrants check a map at a migrant shelter in Arriaga, Chiapas. It is estimated that half a million migrants from Central America cross Mexico each year. Arriaga, Mexico. Credit: Markel Redondo/Voces Mesoamerica.

    Even once they have reached the US, Central American migrants continue to face profound challenges on a daily basis. Without documentation, their lives are frequently characterized by insecurity, isolation and the constant threat of deportation. Within this context, smartphones and social media have become important tools to cope with the difficulties of family separation, discrimination and persecution.

    For migrants in the US, thousands of miles from their loved ones and with little prospect of seeing them in the foreseeable future, the mobile phone has become a crucial device for maintaining affective bonds across ‘the wall’ and national borders, a ‘virtual proximity’ that enables them to remain connected with their countries of origin. Through the use of ICTs, migrants create their own meanings that go beyond those designed by the developers of the technology, and that instead are created by their own needs, expectations and perceptions.

    In the past, to remain connected, migrants and their family members in their countries of origin had to wait a long time to receive a letter in the mail or coordinate international phone calls that might happen once a month – both time-consuming and expensive options. ICTs now allow transnational communication and social interactions to be part of ‘everyday’ life, transforming the nature of the migrant transnational networks and their connections with their families. Migrant families and networks have never had so many possibilities within their interpersonal relationships for interaction and sharing.

    Yet while migrants use technology to foster and strengthen their transnational networks and as devices for safety, information sharing and communication, government agencies and corporations have exploited ICTs for their securitization of the migration agenda. Indeed, the US government has invested millions of dollars in law enforcement, migrant prisons, tracking technologies and deportation facilities. In early 2020, for example, it was reported that the Trump administration had purchased data relating to millions of smartphone users from Venntel Inc. specifically for immigration enforcement purposes. Having acquired this data, federal agencies can access personal information collected through everyday use of smartphone apps in order to track undocumented migrants. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), two divisions under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), are reportedly now using this data to locate and arrest undocumented migrants in the US. This is far from being an isolated case: the data mining company Palantir’s ‘Investigative Case Management’ (ICM) system has reportedly been used by ICE to track down, incarcerate and deport migrants, with activists accusing Palantir and other corporations which have supported its operations, including Amazon which hosts the ICM system on the servers of its Web Services division, of being complicit in the mistreatment of migrants in the US.

    ICTs and migration: a mixed picture for migrants

    Whether making the perilous journey across Mexico or living in the shadow of surveillance in the US, technologies are both a blessing and a threat. Every undocumented migrant must reconcile these tensions and contradictions. The smartphone, for instance, can provide safety, information and emotional support while simultaneously provoking feelings of pain, guilt and frustration. It also brings new dangers and forms of exploitation. The study of the interconnections between ICTs and migration should recognize these complexities, as they are intertwined in the experiences of thousands of people migrating from Central America and elsewhere.

    As with so many aspects of the migration experience, there are no easy answers. While violence and insecurity in Central America persist, migrants will continue to make the difficult journey to the US – and ICTs, whether as their ally or enemy, will be with them every step of the way.

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

  • By 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.

    Among other provisions, it acknowledged their unique identities, land ownership and their right to live free from racism, as well as the state’s commitment to ‘uphold, protect and develop collective knowledge’, including ‘their science, technologies and ancestral wisdom’. This last formulation is particularly striking, given the tendency for governments across the world to disregard traditional knowledge systems or, at best, see them through a folkloric lens – rather than accept them as living, contemporary worldviews with urgent relevance to many of today’s most pressing challenges.

    Despite the apparent progress signified in the 2008 Constitution, Ecuador’s indigenous peoples – numbering some 1.1 million from a total of 14 distinct communities – are still struggling to secure these basic rights and freedoms. Their continued exclusion is reflected in the fact that almost two-thirds of indigenous Ecuadorians are living in poverty – a proportion that is three times higher than the level among their mestizo counterparts. This deprivation is in large part rooted in the dispossession of their most precious resource, their ancestral lands, and with it the rich biodiversity that for centuries has sustained their cultures, livelihoods and spiritual values.

    The latest chapter in this saga of exploitation and discrimination is the threat posed by Ecuador’s growing mining sector as companies, with the support of the state, have encroached on indigenous peoples’ communal territory to extract oil, copper, silver, gold and other natural resources. In opposing these activities and their devastating impacts on health, food security and the environment, indigenous activists have complained that they have been typecast as being ‘anti-development’ – a common trope that seeks to frame indigenous resistance as a movement against technological progress. At times, international supporters of threatened communities may unwittingly use the same dichotomy by contrasting indigenous traditions with the destructive impacts of corporations uprooting ecosystems for rare metals and fossil fuels.

    While it is true that communities draw on long-standing knowledge and practices around environmental stewardship, indigenous perspectives in Ecuador and elsewhere are not static and continue to evolve. This is demonstrated by the use of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) by many indigenous Ecuadorians, despite significant inequities in access, including in human rights activism and community mobilization. This was evident in October 2019 during widespread demonstrations against a package of austerity measures proposed by the Ecuadorian government. Led by indigenous protesters, the demonstrations eventually pressured the government to abandon its planned rollback of public services. Their success was due in part to the effective use of social media, such as documenting incidents of violence by soldiers against civilians during the unrest.

    Indigenous women stand outside next to a wall in Chimborazo, Ecuador / Stephen Reich.

    It is true that new technologies, including the internet, can pose a threat of acculturation as individual languages and cultures are side-lined by globalized media and entertainment. Nevertheless, Ecuador’s indigenous organizations have found ways to repurpose these technologies to overcome such barriers. For example, in response to the lack of widely available information on the Covid-19 pandemic for non-Spanish speakers, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities in Ecuador (CONAIE) has been translating advice from the World Health Organization and disseminating it to communities using the hashtags #WasipiSakiri and #JeminPujusta, translating to ‘Stay at home’ in Quichua and Shuar respectively.

    While celebrating these activities, however, it is important to acknowledge the fact that the inequalities that indigenous Ecuadorians experience in other areas of their lives are also reflected in their access to new technologies such as laptops and smartphones. Affordability remains a critical issue for many poorer citizens, including a significant proportion of indigenous people, a situation reinforced by their educational exclusion. These disparities are especially stark for certain groups within the indigenous population, such as people with disabilities, who experience multiple forms of discrimination: the proportion of those with disabilities among the indigenous population is significantly higher than among the non-indigenous population.

    Some commentators have expressed concern that, if unequal access to ICTs among indigenous Ecuadorians persists, then their power to drive social change may in the future diminish. After everything that has been achieved in the last few decades, this would be disastrous. What we must do now is focus our efforts on improving access for all Ecuadorians to ICTs, but with a particular focus on ensuring that the disproportionate gaps experienced by indigenous peoples, those with disabilities and other marginalized groups are eliminated. This, more than anything, would demonstrate real progress – an approach where technological development and social inclusion go hand in hand.

    Photo: Indigenous people react during protests against Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno’s austerity measures in Quito, Ecuador / REUTERS/Henry Romero.

  • By 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 has had a significant impact on the Bay Area, which includes the urban centres of San José and San Francisco to the south and north, along with Berkeley and Oakland in the east.

    San Francisco, in proximity to Silicon Valley and the tech-related funding that comes with it, has been a focal point for testing new technologies at the cutting edge of smart city design. As part of this effort, the city has implemented a wide range of projects to address issues such as waste management, established various ‘green policies’, including bans on plastic bags and the first solar rebate programme in the region, and increased reliance on public transportation along with a transition to autonomous vehicles. The city and wider region have become known for concentrating on innovation and technology to problem solve. In many ways, San Francisco has taken to heart the common tech industry refrain, ‘Move fast and break things’, originally popularized by Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg.

    Yet while San Francisco has been lauded as a pioneer in the move towards smart city development, the limitations of this approach to resolve deep-seated social problems 105are increasingly coming into focus. Indeed, the drive for greater liveability, efficiency and convenience has left many of the city’s most marginalized residents far behind. One of the starkest examples of this is the ever-widening wealth gap in the city, most visible in the growing number of individuals living on the streets. For years, human rights groups have sounded the alarm at the deplorable conditions in which unhoused individuals have been forced to live. In 2017, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, toured the United States (US), including San Francisco, meeting people who are unhoused and the civil society groups working alongside them. Alston witnessed how cities like San Francisco are pioneering a technology called Coordinated Entry System (CES), which uses surveys conducted by caseworkers or volunteers to collect data and then computer algorithms to match unhoused people with available services. Following his visit, the Special Rapporteur noted that in San Francisco, ‘many homeless individuals feel deeply ambivalent about the millions of dollars that are being spent on new technology to funnel them to housing that does not exist’. Innovations such as CES do not get to the heart of the problem, namely the chronic shortage of affordable housing. A further issue with CES surveys is that they typically ask very intimate questions. In Los Angeles, for instance, the surveys ask whether the person being interviewed has engaged in sex work, forcing unhoused people to feel as if they must abandon their right to privacy in order to gain their right to housing.

    An issue specific to the San Francisco CES is that families living in overcrowded accommodation in so-called Single Room Occupancy hotels (SROs) are downgraded to low priority by the system’s algorithms, despite the fact that families with children are crammed into typically 2.5 m × 2.5 m rooms originally built for single adult residents. Forty per cent of the rooms in San Francisco’s SROs house four or more people. According to US federal government guidelines, families living with children in SROs are still considered homeless and in need of permanent housing, because the accommodation is not intended for them. This is not the case with San Francisco’s CES, thereby excluding the majority of homeless families. There is a stark ethnic dimension to this too: 62 per cent of the city’s SRO families are immigrants. Not surprisingly then, in 2018 the Special Rapporteur released a report that called the conditions in which unhoused individuals in the Bay Area live ‘cruel and inhuman’, with many denied basic needs such as water, sanitation and health care.

    Carla Mays, co-founder of #SmartCohort, a global ‘do-tank’ helping to build smart and resilient cities for all / JD Lasica.

    For Carla Mays, an analyst and planner in smart infrastructure and hazard mitigation as well as co-founder of #SmartCohort, a global ‘do-tank’ helping to design and build smart and resilient cities for all, the current ‘dystopia’ being realized in San Francisco is not just a consequence of moving too quickly into the future. It is also the result of an approach that leaves the injustices and systemic 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.

    As part of this work, Mays has travelled throughout the US and the world, learning from other communities and cultures about how smart cities and the technologies they engage can be implemented thoughtfully to limit, instead of exacerbate, inequity. For instance, she looks to Singapore as a guide to being a multicultural society where the government has integrated smart city design in a way that engages residents’ differing needs, from its housing schemes to public transportation. Mays notes how, in big and small ways, Singapore finds tech-based solutions that are yet to be seen in San Francisco. For example, within the Chinese communities of both cities, it is common for older residents to travel almost daily to the city’s respective Chinatowns; Mays explains that ‘in Singapore they had designed the transit system so that these seniors could get around’, while in San Francisco this community-responsive transit infrastructure is lacking.

    Throughout the US, and particularly in major cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, New York and Washington DC, Mays has witnessed a tendency to rely on neoliberal policies that focus on the cost-saving possibilities of tech innovation over their effects on society. She emphasizes how such policies at best ignore and at worst exploit the foundational racism and sexism in the US. She points to how smart city design in San Francisco has not successfully addressed the ongoing social and economic impacts of its history of exclusion and discrimination: the impact of slavery on the African-American community, the genocide and displacement of indigenous communities, specifically the Ohlone tribe native to the land the city occupies, as well as the undervaluing and exploitation of Asian immigrants like the Chinese who worked on the railways and in agriculture during the gold rush, later targeted under the Chinese Exclusion Act. By bringing up these issues, Mays seeks to shine a light on the human rights concerns that must be considered if smart city design is to be genuinely inclusive and equitable.

    Mays also observes that in highlighting the successes of multicultural smart city design in Singapore, she cannot ignore that country’s own human rights issues, including infringements of freedom of expression and the press, as well as legally codified discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals. But, she clarifies, ‘In the US we have a real finger-pointing problem’, wherein the country looks to patrol the human rights record of other countries while simultaneously committing violations both domestically and abroad. As Mays describes, ‘We are not with clean hands and we like to look around and look at [what] other people [are doing wrong], but our country is built on slave labour and we’re not exactly doing a lot of good things right now in tech’.

    We are not with clean hands and we like to look around and look at [what] other people [are doing wrong], but our country is built on slave labour and we’re not exactly doing a lot of good things right now in tech.

    Carla Mays, Co-founder, #SmartCohort

    At present, access is not provided equally to the benefits brought by the tech industry to the Bay Area. Mays specifically points to online platforming for San Francisco’s affordable housing services and the emphasis on credit card use over cash to pay public transportation fares. She notes that, increasingly, people need access to capital and the internet to benefit from smart city innovations. Yet more than 100,000 San Francisco residents do not subscribe to home internet and almost half of adult housing shelters in the city do not have wireless internet. As a result, many of the individuals the online affordable housing portal is supposed to benefit do not have a regular or consistent means to access it. Mays also notes limited efforts to educate residents on how to use the portal: while some community organizations (particularly Russian, Chinese and Jewish ones) have undertaken outreach and training to make up for what the city has not provided, fewer African-American and Hispanic community-based organizations have had the resources to provide this specific support.

    There is a broader context of profound social inequality. Within the US as a whole, the lifetime wealth 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 population overall, African Americans make up 37 per cent of the city’s homeless population. Mays also traces a line back to historical factors that purposefully restricted or barred ethnic minority groups from certain labour markets and formal banking systems.

    You have to level the playing field and the only way to level the playing field is if you give capital and access to capital so people can start a business, they can start a non-profit, they can buy a house.

    Carla Mays

    Co-founder, #SmartCohort

    In part, her solution is to meaningfully rectify the wrongs of the past that continue to harm people today. She advocates for reparations to address the legacy of economic disenfranchisement created within African-American communities as a result of slavery and generations of repression, from over-policing to mass incarceration. ‘You have to level the playing field,’ she says, ‘and the only way to level the playing field is if you give capital and access to capital so people can start a business, they can start a non-profit, they can buy a house.’

    Mays also calls out what she sees as an ineffectual focus on implicit bias within self-described progressive and politically liberal (and usually majority white) circles. She provides the examples of tech companies mandating training on implicit bias that does little more than put white experience at its core without changing the extreme under-representation of women and people of colour in their workforces. ‘Every liberal’, she says wryly, ‘will start a meeting talking about [being on] Ohlone land but they will not give them any capital or land back.’ These examples made her recognize how racism has manifested itself differently within San Francisco and other liberal US cities compared to the overt forms she has experienced in 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 government. According to her, there can no longer just be ‘a lot of nice talk’ about equity and inclusion. To ensure that technology, as it continues to enmesh itself in everyday life, does not further entrench systems of racism, sexism and exclusion, all members of society should be present in positions of power.

    Photo: 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.

  • By Alicia Kroemer

    James Walkingstick is a young activist from the Cherokee Nation, currently working, alongside his social anthropology 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 apply traditional indigenous knowledge to address current issues like climate change?

    LEAD Agency was founded in 1997 as a response to the Tar Creek Superfund Site. This site was the largest lead producer during the First World War, supplying over half of the bullets used in the war. The mine shafts were abandoned shortly after the Second World War and they flooded with water. In the 1980s, water began seeping out of the shafts and into our local creeks. This water was contaminated with cadmium, zinc and lead — all of which are highly toxic pollutants. The water subsequently oxidized and turned red, which led those living in this area to become ill. We are deeply concerned about the health risks associated with water heavily contaminated with lead.

    LEAD Agency fought against the contamination and worked to protect citizens and our water source. LEAD took up the initiative to get the EPA involved, bringing in the government and various organizations to clean the Tar Creek Superfund Site. It happens to be in a location where over ten tribes reside. The contamination directly and disproportionately affects Native Americans. The Cherokee Nation founders of LEAD — Rebecca Jim and Earl Hatley — wanted to implement their indigenous knowledge by working together as a community to do the clean-up.

    The indigenous knowledge that the founders strongly pushed was Gadugi, which is the Cherokee value of coming together as one and working together to accomplish a goal. This value has been with our people for millennia. Our people came together to harvest crops, settle negotiations and build networks with this value. Even the root of the word, Gadu, means bread — a food item that requires collaboration to craft.

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

    Through Gadugi, our agency has been able to reach out and achieve positive outcomes for all tribes involved. We have been able to make it a harmonious, collaborative effort. While the site is on Quapaw tribal land, all surrounding tribes are getting involved and helping LEAD Agency push the issues to the forefront. We are bringing in other agencies, like the Department of Environmental Quality and the EPA.

    Through the value of Gadugi, we have been able to come together and protect our water, our most sacred relation. The Cherokee people are people of the creek — we go to the water for ceremony. We use water in our everyday life; clean water is vital for our communities. We have taken every action to protect it. To negate pollutants, we have also implemented food sovereignty. The site has created giant piles of toxic chataround Tar Creek — waste produced from lead mining. These chat piles have spread enormous amounts of poisonous dust around the area and many local crops are affected. This means our food sources remain at high risk. We use food sovereignty as a way of counteracting this. We aim to control what we eat through growing traditional indigenous foods that sustain us. We are using the methods that we have always known in our communities. If a yard is contaminated with lead but a person wants to grow vegetables in their garden, we raise crops up by one or two feet above the soil to keep them safe, using mulch and compost as counteragents. This is ancient indigenous knowledge being practically applied. By using this knowledge today, we are able to combat lead contamination.

    We are also trying to solve the issue of massive environmental inequality on tribal land. A recent study by the EPA found that our traditional plants (arrowroot and duckweed — found along Tar Creek) contain many times the safe amount of lead, compared to baseline plants. These plants are consumed only by Native Americans. Our alleyways and playgrounds have been paved with chat. Recent studies have shown that a third of our Native youth have been diagnosed with lead poisoning. We know we need to advocate for ourselves and our tribal communities.

    Chat piles and abandoned buildings in the Tar Creek Superfund Site (Picher, OK) / Mike Simmons/Tulsa World (2017).

    In terms of technology, innovation and access, how can traditional indigenous knowledge be applied in each category?

    There are myriad ways we can implement what we know, but I think the heart of it is our sovereignty. If we want to be innovative, create access and use our technology for a sustainable future, we need to look at our sovereignty first as nations. Our connected tribes have been reaching out in new ways to create a better future. With regard to technology, look at our use of solar panels: the Quapaw Nation has been building them on tribal land, especially around the superfund site. We have already recovered over 800 acres of polluted land by remediating the soil and eliminating the presence of toxic chat. We are creating new ways for sustainable energy for the tribe. The Cherokee Nation uses hydroelectric power with the world’s longest multi-arched dam. Through the Pensacola Dam we can provide tribal citizens with hydroelectric power and fight our reliance on fossil fuels to powerhomes.

    LEAD Agency is playing a direct role by advocating for communities upstream of the dam, ensuring we receive clean energy and safe lake levels. We have been pushing toward a future that is combating climate change. As for innovation, the Peoria Tribe has invested nearly US$400,000 in a new medical centre for Native nurses, along with upwards of US$1 million in scholarships.

    The Cherokee Nation, Modoc Nation and Quapaw Nation all possess prospering herds of bison, with the hope of nurturing a growing industry. We are all working together. While the value of Gadugiis a Cherokee value — it connects all tribes and nations. We are carrying that same value by different names. The sovereignty that we use can push us forward, push us away from fossil fuels, push everyone into a cleaner future.

    Another Cherokee value that we hold is Detsadaligenvdisgesdi, the value that we take responsibility for each other. We watch out for one another and highly value the wellbeing of one another. It is not limited to our tribe or our identity: this is a value which is universal, timeless and necessary for the survival of humanity. This responsibility is vital for our future and for addressing inequality. If we continue to place our own individuality at the centre of our existence we will collapse on ourselves. It is through Gadugi and caring for our community that we truly thrive and survive. You must have that right mind and heart to combat inequality.

    Why is it important that the next generation of indigenous youth prioritize transmission of knowledge in addressing modern problems?

    Our youth are the future. Within North American tribes, we share the value of the seventh generation (though by many different names). It is an inter-tribal value that we must care for the seven generations ahead. It means creating a positive future for your children and your children’s children; to create an environment where they can sustain themselves. 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. This is a problem that we face here in the Cherokee Nation, due to language loss. Our language has been diminished by colonial institutions and because of this we have lost many of our values and traditional knowledge. Right now, we are cultivating a comeback and building on language preservation programmes. Last year we lost our last monolingual Cherokee speaker, Mack Vann.

    When we lose our language, we lose our values, and we lose Gadugi. When we teach youth our language, they learn the values inherent within our culture — what our people have been doing for thousands of years. When our youth step up and reach out they help the community in so many ways. We will have a bright future ahead of us if the youth know their values and build on that knowledge, applying it into the future. The pathway to a sustainable future is rooted in Gadugi, turning from individuality to the collective. Even if we feel alone, we are a part of the community of humanity, who have the privilege of existence on this planet. Let us live through Gadugiand care for each other — by ensuring green and sustainable practices are the default global shared value — for those who will be living on this planet when we no longer are.

    Photo: Rebecca Jim, Founder of LEAD Agency sifts through Tar Creek / Ian Maule, courtesy of Culture Trip (2019).

Asia and Oceania

  • 01
    Cambodia: Protecting indigenous resources with a community-based monitoring app

    By Nicole Girard Cambodia’s forests are being pillaged to feed demand for luxury lumber in Vietnam and China, decimated for industrial agriculture, such as rubber plantations, and cleared for mining exploration. Deforestation rates in…

    1 min read

  • 02
    Pacific: For indigenous communities, new seabed mining technologies could begin ‘the biggest land grab in history’

    By 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…

    1 min read

  • 03
    India: The dissemination of misinformation on WhatsApp is driving vigilante violence against minorities

    By 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…

    1 min read

  • 04
    Nepal: For persons with disabilities from minority and indigenous communities, the greatest barrier to accessing assistive technologies is discrimination

    By Pratima Gurung 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…

    1 min read

  • 05
    China: International firms are benefiting from Chinese technologies used to persecute Uyghurs and other minorities

    By 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…

    1 min read

  • 06
    Pakistan: ‘The virus has turned every facet of life upside down’ – privacy and data protection concerns in the wake of Covid-19

    By 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…

    1 min read

  • By Nicole Girard

    Cambodia’s forests are being pillaged to feed demand for luxury lumber in Vietnam and China, decimated for industrial agriculture, 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 remaining lowland evergreen forest complex in mainland Southeast Asia, comprising 500,000 hectares spanning four provinces in the central plains of Cambodia, home to an astounding array of endangered species and approximately 200,000 indigenous Kuy people. Despite being declared a Wildlife Sanctuary by the Cambodian government in 2016, logging in Prey Lang has continued, with deforestation rates inside protected areas in Cambodia consistently as high as those found outside.

    Indigenous Kuy, who rely on these forests for their livelihoods, through collecting resin and other non-timber forest products, as well as their spiritual and cultural identity, have been collectively organizing for protection of the forest. Formed in 2007, the Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN) brought together concerned community members and combined efforts to protect the forest. One of their main activities has been forest patrolling, whereby groups of community volunteers informally track illegal forest activities, alerting authorities, damaging cut timber and confiscating logging equipment.

    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 of Denmark, specifically because community input was prioritized through a participatory needs assessment process, starting from its initial design and continuing throughout the multiple versions that were tested and tweaked through community feedback.

    A man photographs a marked tree in the Prey Lang forest / Courtesy of Nerea Turreira Garcia.

    The app needed to be designed to meet the specific needs of local users, some of whom were illiterate or unfamiliar with smartphones, and at the same time reduce the lag between the collection and publication of content to ensure a reliable, up-to-date visual and audio database. Through using the Sapelli Platform, open source technology specifically designed for users with limited technological literacy, the team came up with a forest crime monitoring app that collected three types of information: reference data (metadata including time and date, GPS coordinates and phone ID), primary documentation data (incident documentation with photo and/or audio) and thematic tagging of the logged data. The newest version of the PLA includes tagging for activities (such as instances of illegal logging and hunting), resources (forest products used for cultural or livelihood activities), reporting(monitoring interactions with authorities) and climate (unusual changes in natural cycles and local adaptation strategies). The data is then automatically uploaded to a centralized online database using existing cell phone networks, which is then validated by a data management team at the University of Copenhagen and used to compile monitoring reports.

    Security features in the PLA are relatively new, incorporated as a result of incidents of violence or threats of violence from loggers or local authorities against PLCN monitors. ‘The patrollers can report incidents of violence or potential threats that they received, from loggers, authorities or other groups’, explains Dimitris Argyriou, one of the project team members. ‘The entries can include information on the date and time of the incident, the location, the perpetrator, the people that were present at the incident and more.’

    After the PLCN had used it for two years, the University of Copenhagen team analysed the app’s success and challenges in its practical application. They found that the monitors had made a total of 10,842 entries related to forest resources and illegal logging. Forty-two per cent (4,560) of these entries were validated by the external data managers, yet 46 per cent (4,979) were excluded because of a technical error, while only 12 per cent (1,303) were excluded because of a human error.

    The main problem contributing to the technical errors was limited availability of a mobile network in the forest, which made it difficult to upload entries with multiple pictures. Lack of a reliable mobile network was also cited by forest monitors as a key drawback. One of the PLCN patroller survey respondents cited in the study commented: ‘It is not possible to get a signal in my village and I have to travel to Thala Barivat [Stung Treng Province] to get a signal strong enough to upload my data. Therefore, my phone memory is often full.’

    Other issues cited in the study include challenges with long-term sustainability, including maintenance of phones and software, and the reliance on an external team to validate the digital data which could prove expensive. Overwhelmingly, though, the findings were positive, with the study reporting no significant problems in terms of the accessibility for the community despite its complexity. Furthermore, there appeared to be no meaningful differences in the proportion of validated entries across gender and age groups, overturning 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. We could definitely advance our user experience more and automate the data management web-app but these are secondary targets.’

    As recognized by MRG and many other indigenous and environmental rights organizations, ensuring indigenous rights to land and resources is one of the most successful means to preserve the integrity of natural ecosystems, and technology such as the PLA is helping to realize that goal. The monitoring reports produced by the PLA are the most extensive source of data on illegal logging in the Prey Lang forest, offering an invaluable resource for advocacy and awareness raising. The app has also proven itself to be a cost-effective method of forest monitoring when compared to the use of professional forest rangers. As the indigenous Kuy of Prey Lang continue to struggle to secure official recognition of their collective stewardship and land tenure over their ancestral forests, the PLA is proving to be a crucial tool to advance that goal, establishing the necessary data collection systems to create an effective approach to forest management.

    Photo: Men stack timber from a recently felled trey in the Prey Lang forest / Courtesy of Nerea Turreira Garcia.

  • By 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 inextricably interconnected to one another: it is a symbiotic relationship of sacredness and respect. What happens to the land and in this case the sea directly impacts the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands. Deep seabed mining will result in social destruction, economic disruption and spiritual devastation. As the Clan Chief of Duke of York Islands in Papua New Guinea, has put it: ‘When they start mining the seabed they’ll start mining part of me.’

    On the frontline of a new ‘gold rush’

    Local communities and cultural practitioners whose livelihoods and existence on Earth depend on their relationship to the Pacific have organized against the latest wave of exploitation of their sacred homelands in Oceania. They are confronted, however, by powerful corporate interests. Around 30 contractors have already acquired exploration licences from the UN International Seabed Authority (ISA) and are eagerly awaiting the decision on a new mining code at the 26th session of the ISA in July 2020. The session has now been postponed until later in the year, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

    In most of the contractors’ sights are the large deposits of rare earths and minerals on the seabed of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an immense and largely uncharted area in the North Pacific Ocean teeming with an array of marine life, including many unknown species. It’s already being dubbed the new global gold rush, though the valuable metals here are nickel, cobalt, manganese and copper — all materials that play a central role in the production of batteries, electronics and other technologies.

    Yet their planned extraction collides directly with the cultural belief systems of the indigenous population, who believe the minerals mined from the seabed are constituted by the spirits originating from the Pacific Ocean. Once again, a pristine indigenous sacred space is being plundered for profit, with little or no regard for the human rights of the inhabitants and the wider Pacific.

    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

    Dr Sylvia A. Earle, oceanographer and marine biologist

    A living universe beneath the waves

    Commercial extraction by the contractors has so far been put on hold pending agreement on the mining code. When the ISA votes on whether to grant commercial-scale exploitation licences to these companies, what will their decision be based on? Not the views of the Pacific peoples themselves, at least not directly, as this body still lacks indigenous representation despite calls to include them in decision-making. Will they factor in the profound spiritual value of this unique seascape to the communities who depend on it? Will they recognize that this area remains one of the last great enigmas of the natural world, an area that is still less well known and understood than the moon? Will they acknowledge that at present it is impossible to predict the damage that will be wrought on the ecosystem by these largely untested, highly invasive mining technologies?

    While the mining industry regards the Clarion-Clipperton Zone as a potential windfall of commodities waiting to be extracted, indigenous peoples view it as a living system. Its ‘nodules’ — the potato-sized lumps of rock lying on the seabed that the mining companies seek to uproot for the minerals and metals they contain — are themselves vested with meaning. Scientists and indigenous peoples both understand that the deep seabed is alive. In the words of Sylvia Earle, ‘These living rocks are not dead stones — they are living systems.’

    A way of life under threat

    Solwara 1 was operated by Nautilus Minerals, a Canadian corporation, in Papua New Guinea and was — until the project’s high-profile collapse in late 2019 — the world’s first commercial deep sea mine site. It demonstrates the impact that mining has already had, even at the exploration stage, for indigenous peoples in the islands of the Pacific.

    New Ireland’s West Coast communities have been home to shark callers for centuries. Armed only with a larung, a rattle fashioned out of coconut shells and bamboo, the shark callers connect with various breeds of shark who then come to their boat before being caught by hand. This ancient fishing tradition, besides providing an essential source of protein, is deeply rooted in the ancestral wisdom of the Kontu inhabitants and their close connection to the sea.

    In recent years, however, while exploration by Nautilus Minerals has been under way, the sharks have not returned. The noise from ships and large equipment, as well as contamination of the waters where the callers communicate with the sharks, now threatens this long-established practice. For local inhabitants, whose livelihoods and spiritual beliefs are intertwined with shark-calling culture, the effects have been devastating.

    Many other indigenous peoples in the region face the threat of corporate colonialism. From nuclear testing to climate change, the Pacific — despite the deep-seated traditions of responsible stewardship of its communities towards the natural resources that sustain them — has been ground zero in the global environmental collapse brought on by excessive consumerism, unregulated growth and profiteering. Yet, though the catastrophe now playing out in many of the islands is plain to see, foreign companies and governments still plan to aggressively mine the seabed for anything they can find. This may or may not make their investors richer, but the world will undoubtedly be poorer as a result.

    Conclusion

    Is it easier to bulldoze than to build a culture of respect for nature? What has happened in Papua New Guinea is scheduled for major parts of the Pacific Ocean, with large machines to be lowered to the seabed floor to excavate the rare minerals and metals there. Since so much of its extraordinary variety of marine life is still unrecorded — scientists working there note that many new species are found on every single dive — we may never know how much we lose in the process: the countless life forms we never even discovered before we destroyed them.

    Looking ahead, the challenges now facing the Pacific Ocean are as much to do with indigenous rights as environmental protection. It is evident that environmental impact assessments are essential before any extraction can be allowed, but these must also take place in line with the recognized human rights standards of free, prior and informed consent as well as the precautionary principle. This should also include placing the views and knowledge of indigenous peoples at the heart of this process through meaningful, equitable representation in decision-making, particularly in relation to the new global treaties now being forged at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), as well as specific decisions at the ISA on deep sea mineral extraction.

    Aside from the negotiations at the International Seabed Authority, there is another significant process currently on the global docket regarding protection of our oceans. Since 2018, an Intergovernmental Conference convened by the UNGA has been negotiating a binding instrument to govern Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ). The Intergovernmental Conference had been intending to meet in March–April 2020 for a fourth and final round of negotiations on the 350-page text covering the seas beyond the national jurisdiction of coastal states; however, the session was postponed on account of Covid-19. Governments are hoping that the delay may give them time to agree on a number of disputed topics, including benefit-sharing between the private sector and coastal states. Most crucially though, it is vital that the principles of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples inform this global dialogue, with a long-term moratorium on seabed mining in the meantime to allow for careful and respectful research.

    The deep seabed is an international territory that, like Antarctica and the Arctic, should be preserved for future generations with no military or commercial activities allowed. It is also a common heritage of humanity. Yet, much of what is being proposed is couched in the language of development and technological innovation. While extractive industries have long desired to excise these natural resources from the seabed, the refinement of new and more powerful machinery has now given them the means to do so.

    But there are other forms of technology besides the extractive equipment of the mining corporations, including the unique knowledge systems of the Pacific, that offer an alternative vision of progress rooted in sustainable environmental management, conscious consumption and circular economy approaches. Deep seabed mining, on the other hand, would steer global civil society in the wrong direction, undermining the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 (to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns) and SDG 14 (to conserve our oceans while caring for life below water).

    ‘We must not take more from the ocean but find the balance,’ says Silvia Earle. ‘Let’s respect the ocean for what it gives us — life.’ Though she is merely echoing what most indigenous Pacific islanders would tell you, this simple but important warning continues to be ignored.

    Photo: Using a larung, a shark caller rattles coconut shells in water to improvise an irritated school of tuna, a sound which 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, Papua New Guinea / Claudio Sieber.

  • By 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 random strangers being beaten to death on the suspicion that they are potential child-kidnappers or organ-snatchers, discriminated groups such as Muslims and Dalits have been especially targeted, particularly in relation to allegations of cow slaughter – an issue that has increasingly been used as a catalyst for attacks by right-wing Hindu nationalists.

    Typology of misinformation

    IIn order to better understand how WhatsApp and other social media messaging platforms are implicated in discriminatory mob violence, using funding from WhatsApp we conducted an independent qualitative study in four large states of India between November 2018 and August 2019. As part of this study, we interacted with nearly 300 WhatsApp users from a wide range of backgrounds: men and women aged between 18 and 50, in both rural and urban areas, from upper and lower castes, and including Hindus, Muslims and Adivasis with a variety of political beliefs and occupations. We also studied more than 1,000 WhatsApp anonymized messages that were typically shared in WhatsApp groups.

    Based on this review, we developed a typology of violence-fuelling misinformation that is most commonly received and shared by Indian WhatsApp users. The categories include:

    • Overwhelming content: still and moving images of incidents from across the world, shared without context, each displaying something spectacular — an execution, an accident, a child getting beaten up, a natural disaster, fires and so on — to engage users by imparting a sense of shock. This content also serves the function of establishing a WhatsApp group as a significant channel of information unavailable in mainstream broadcast and print media, where graphic violence is generally not shown.
    • Nationalism and ethno-religious bigotry: these messages are conspiratorial, drawing on a wide number of established stereotypes and prejudices against minority populations. They often build on negative propaganda featured in mainstream outlets, such as anxieties around population growth among poor and minority populations, conspiracy theories about the forced conversion of disenfranchised Hindus to Christianity, smear campaigns aimed at opposition politicians, and other narratives aiming to incite hostility towards particular groups or individuals.
    • Miscellaneous: this includes festival-related greetings, videos of animals, television clips from talent shows and news programmes, public events, humorous clips from India and across the world (including content imported from other platforms such as YouTube and TikTok) and other material. Though seemingly innocuous, these snippets function to sustain the impression of a constant ‘flow’ of information and to build the profile, brand and legitimacy of users who pass on other kinds of misinformation.
    • Gendered content: as in many other areas, WhatsApp usage in India continues to be highly gendered. Women across age, religion, class and caste do not have unrestricted access to mobile phones, and their use is often closely monitored and controlled by their husbands, brothers, fathers or other male relatives. Young women who do use social media frequently experience messages threatening them with devastating physical and symbolic violence, including rape, harassment and the public sharing of personal information to intimidate them into silence. Frequently, incidents of online harassment result in a vicious circle, where families and communities blame the women for attracting these attacks.

    A recurrent trope that has recently emerged is reports — usually a short video or an image with a voiceover — of child-kidnapping ‘gangs’ or an individual kidnapper allegedly doing the rounds in or around a community. Since 2017, when the frequency of these attacks dramatically increased, dozens of people have been lynched on the suspicion that they are child-kidnappers. Usually, in South Indian states the ‘stranger’ is described as being from North India and vice versa. More recently, the same misinformation is being shared with the putative strangers now being described as Rohingya Muslim refugees, thus playing into the government’s strategic generation of fear and loathing of outsiders in the wake of its National Register of Citizens initiative.

    User motivations

    A significant section of WhatsApp users expressed fatigue with the volume of WhatsApp messages received in a single day. They were members of several groups formed on the basis of family, friendship, neighbourhood, caste, religion, political party and occupation. Users were part of most of these networks offline and active online participation cemented their credibility and membership in the offline world. It mattered to users that they be seen as active, knowing WhatsApp participants in specific groups.

    Some users — particularly those over 25 — categorized messages on the basis of sender-credibility. Younger users, on the other hand, were more sceptical about the accuracy of the messages because of enhanced functional media literacy. If a video message was edited heavily, for instance, they were able to spot the places where the video had been altered and were suspicious of its authenticity — although this did not always lead them to reject the message or to report it. Most users suspended their scepticism during politically charged moments such as cross-border conflict and general elections, or regarding news of child-kidnappings. During such occasions, users reported that they forwarded messages out of an assumed sense of civic duty, and out of loyalty to family or communal ties that have historic roots. That these ties were often caste-based, partisan and led to the spread of misinformation was less important to them than displaying adequate nationalist or communal fervour at a fraught moment. Another finding was that, contrary to popular belief, users with little or no digital and media literacy played a minimal role in the spread of misinformation. A very small number would receive and forward misinformation uncritically. However, it was primarily upper-caste privileged men, and some women connected to them, with high levels of functional media literacy and class capital, who were involved both in producing this content and creating the networks to disseminate it to others.

    Inadequate state response

    The increasing use of media platforms such as WhatsApp to harass citizens who dissent from the ruling party agenda and its nationalistic ideology has been enabled by impunity. Not only have the police and security forces failed to prevent the spread of misinformation but there is also evidence that a significant portion 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 case is currently being heard by the Supreme Court of India. However, given that far-right and nationalist groups continue to disseminate misinformation with impunity on public platforms such as Facebook, ending encryption is unlikely in itself to resolve the problem of online incitement.

    Furthermore, human rights activists have expressed concern that the government could exploit such a move to monitor and repress political opponents and dissenters, rather than curb hate speech against minorities and other marginalized groups. For instance, the district-level administration in different parts of the country has arbitrarily placed restrictions on WhatsApp usage during sensitive periods. For example, in the districts of Kargil and Leh, internet access was restored in December 2019 after a five-month internet shutdown in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. With the restoration of internet services, the district administration has demanded that all administrators of WhatsApp groups are required to register themselves with the district administration, with strict orders that they will be held responsible for any content circulated on these WhatsApp groups.

    The cover of Indian magazin ‘India Today’ with the headline ‘The Weaponisation of WhatsApp’ / Nick Kaiser/dpa/Alamy.

    This has taken place against the backdrop of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s growing authoritarianism, particularly towards Muslims and democratic dissenters. The erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir and the state of Uttar Pradesh, both states with large Muslim populations, have faced large-scale violence and the imposition of curfews, internet shutdowns and police aggression against protesters. In late 2019, the central government passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (which came into operation on 10 January 2020), providing citizenship to persecuted minorities of different religions from neighbouring countries except Muslims. In addition, the central government has also allocated budgets for undertaking the National Population Registry that seeks to identify ‘valid’ citizens on the basis of identity documents. There seems to be little doubt that the Citizenship Amendment Act, in conjunction with the National Population Register and National Register of Citizens, could be used to label vulnerable Muslims as foreigners or illegal ‘infiltrators’. Facing popular protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act throughout the country, the BJP and the larger family of Hindutva organizations have resorted to using WhatsApp to incite anti-Muslim hatred among its supporters.

    Even as the central government has weaponized its administrative and military powers against Muslims, especially in Kashmir, the same officials have claimed that encryption prevents them from acting against those spreading misinformation. It is difficult to believe this argument is made in good faith, given the lamentable track record of the government and security agencies to tackle hate speech on public social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. In spite of repeated complaints by Dalit activists, feminists, journalists, human rights activists, students, academics and many others, no action has been taken by those who perpetrate death threats, sexual harassment and other forms of abuse. Given that both technology companies and law enforcement agencies have failed to act against hate speech on open platforms, it is doubtful that the removal of encryption will result in any action.

    A smartphone shows no network available under the Kashmir communications blackout / Saqib Majeed/ZUMA Press.

    Towards real change

    Vigilante violence is linked to specific typologies of misinformation produced, shared by and targeted against specific social groups, along the lines of caste, indigeneity, class, religion, gender, sexuality, language and ethnicity. This violent social structure should be taken as the broad context in which applications such as WhatsApp are used. WhatsApp usage further intensifies this violence in specific mediated ways. Motivations of users are important since users have diverse ways to justify misinformation that range from suspension of disbelief to civic duty and nationalism. Such ideological articulations are or should be contested in order to transform the conditions under which social interactions are imagined and acted upon.

    Unfortunately, mainstream thinking on curbing misinformation has been restricted to purely technical solutions, such as possibly removing encryption and investment in functional media literacy. However, misinformation and subsequent vigilante violence need to be curbed through a critical understanding of broader socio-political contexts. Interventions such as promoting a stronger media literacy around the politics of representation and power, as well as cross-stakeholder cooperation to act on hate speech, would be important steps towards real change.

    * More details of the research project and its findings are available in S. Banaji and R. Bhat, WhatsApp Vigilantes: An Exploration of Citizen Reception and Circulation of WhatsApp Misinformation Linked to Mob Violence in India, LSE, 2019. 

    Photo: A man holds a placard that reads ‘stop attacking minorities’ during a protest against mob lynching. Kolkata, India / SOPA Images Limited/Alamy.

  • By Pratima Gurung

    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, however, the challenges are even more acute: in their case, the risks of physical inaccessibility, social stigma and related issues such as discrimination in employment opportunities are heightened by racism. Furthermore, indigenous women with disabilities may be confronted with added barriers around gender, including not only the threat of violence and abuse from non-indigenous groups but also restrictive roles and expectations within their own communities.

    Unsurprisingly, despite the many potential benefits that technologies can bring, the relationship between indigenous persons with disabilities and technologies has been complicated by power imbalances, stereotypes and limited political will. ‘Technology’ is a broad term and assistive technologies are no exception, encompassing something as simple as a white cane to the latest computer software. It can be as fundamental as the ability to access comprehensible information in one’s own language. Yet in all these cases, even when the technology in question is low-cost or guaranteed as a basic human right, in practice it may be unaffordable or inaccessible for many indigenous persons with disabilities.

    At an international level, the importance of information and communications technologies (ICTs) for indigenous peoples was only officially recognized in 2003 in the Geneva Declaration of the Global Forum of Indigenous Peoples and the Information Society. The Global Forum highlighted that ICTs should be used to support and encourage cultural diversity and to preserve and promote the languages, distinct identities and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples, nations and tribes, and in a manner to determine the best advances towards these goals. But to this day, the use of ICTs remains low in many indigenous communities and they are not generally viewed as active users. For indigenous persons with disabilities, the problems of paternalism and negative perceptions about their capacity to engage with advanced technologies have been reinforced by similar assumptions with regards to disability.

    Access to appropriate technologies for persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups can deliver wide ranging benefits, fostering equality, non-discrimination and participation in society. With new generations of screen reading software for those who are blind or visually impaired, improved mobility devices such as wheelchairs for physically disabled users and other assistive technologies, the potential to transform the lives of the millions of indigenous persons with disabilities in developing countries is immense. Yet access to technology continues to be characterized by a growing gap between those who are technology-rich and those who are technology-poor, in the process deepening the existing disparities between dominant groups and those belonging to marginalized groups, including indigenous peoples and persons with disabilities.

    Barriers for accessing technology

    Nepal is no exception to the troubling pattern of exclusion that shapes indigenous and disabled access to technologies at a global level. There are many factors that contribute to the high levels of disability among indigenous peoples and other marginalized communities, such as Dalits, living in rural areas of Nepal. Besides facing an increased exposure to risks such as environmental degradation, climate change impacts, natural disasters, conflict, violence, dangerous working conditions and accidents including in foreign employment, they also suffer poverty, lower standards of health, inadequate nutrition and a lack of suitable rehabilitation services, meaning that in the event of an accident or debilitating illness they are less likely to recover from its effects.

    This was especially evident in the wake of the 2015 earthquake that devastated significant areas of Nepal, with reports of indigenous peoples and Dalits being sidelined from emergency relief. This reflected a broader context of exclusion from public life: a survey undertaken for the United Nations Development Programme in its wake found that 81 per cent of indigenous persons with disabilities and 61.6 per cent of Dalit persons with disabilities stated that they had ‘inadequate or poor’ access to public facilities, compared to 42.2 per cent among persons with disabilities belonging to other ethnic or caste groups.

    In Nepal, perhaps the greatest obstacle to securing the assistive technologies that could change their lives is deep-seated prejudice. ‘Many persons with disabilities from indigenous communities, religious groups and minorities experience multiple layers of discrimination based on their identities and social categories,’ says Jamuna Tamang of the National Indigenous Disabled Women Association Nepal (NIDWAN). These occur at every level, says Tamang, and ‘are direct barriers that impact the daily lives and the social, economic and physical aspects of indigenous peoples with disabilities.’ Broadly summarized by Tamang, these include:

    • Lack of access to information: ‘Even if there are provisions for receiving assistive devices for persons with disabilities, those may not reach indigenous peoples, as the information circulates in urban settings, within networks of a few Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) to which most marginalized groups may not have access.’
    • Administrative hurdles: ‘The procedural requirements may represent more barriers since the documentations and forms may not be provided in accessible formats and appropriate languages. Forms, recommendations, information on rights, procedures for applications, follow up, time frames and legal formalities remain challenges for individuals from these groups as most are not familiarized with institutional and legal structures.’
    • Physical distance: ‘Geographical remoteness is also an obstacle for indigenous peoples and persons with disabilities as travelling to a headquarters or city and going through procedures can take several days and is costly.’
    • Unaffordability: ‘These groups may not be able to afford technologies because of the high costs, maintenance requirements and lack of training and literacy. The absence of initiatives to educate people in this regard can be compounded by the limited information technology infrastructureavailable for indigenous peoples in rural areas.’
    • Culturally inappropriate technologies: ‘If people manage to have access to the technology, they might still not be able to use it properly due to the lack of a disability, social and cultural friendly environment. For example, the wheelchair provided might not be the right size or according to the needs of the disability, or environment and cultural friendly. During our home visits, we have noticed wheelchairs used for keeping clothes and pots and crutches used for chasing chickens in the fields.’

    Indigenous peoples and religious or ethnic minorities such as Dalits may also encounter cultural, attitudinal and structural barriers in accessing assistive devices or disability services. After the 2015 earthquake, one of NIDWAN’s members went to ask for assistive devices for her husband. She was told to write an application and submit it to the local government office near her community. When she went to the office, she was told to wear a formal dress and speak properly while demanding those services from officials. Belonging to an indigenous community she was wearing a lungi, a form of community attire, and was speaking a mix of indigenous Tamang and some Nepali, which was understood. But though the officers could understand her request, she was told to come in proper dress, speak correctly and denied the services she needed. After that, she no longer felt like going to the office again to request any further assistance.

    Unfortunately, her story is far from an isolated case. Indifference and poor treatment of indigenous and minority communities in Nepal are commonplace, though rarely discussed openly. The power dynamics become ubiquitous and this applies at all levels, even in OPDs, with even persons with disabilities from majority groups denying the issues faced by persons with disabilities from indigenous peoples or minorities. Furthermore, what aids are available are often not suited to the environment in which indigenous communities live. Disability equipment often has an extremely low durability and is difficult to repair locally, so most people living in rural areas use assistive devices that are locally made. Very few homes are accessible for persons with disabilities, which leaves them completely dependent on family members. This increases their social, political and economic marginalization and limits their access to necessary and appropriate support and services.

    According to Yub Raj Lama, a visually impaired member of NIDWAN Youth Group, language availability is another significant factor. Having been raised in the city, he himself understands Nepali, the official language of the country, and therefore is able to access all of the facilities available. These assistive technologies are only available in mainstream or majority languages, however: even if these services are provided to indigenous communities, they are unable to use them since most, besides being unfamiliar with the technology, do not speak mainstream Nepali. Like Yub Raj, many visually impaired persons belonging to indigenous communities in Nepal are now looking for ways to exploit these technologies, but as they remain unavailable in their own languages there is a danger that they will become yet another area of their lives where they are forced to assimilate to the cultural and linguistic context of the majority population.

    Opportunities and ways forward

    There is currently a dearth of information, a lack of documentation and limited debate on the role of ICTs to ensure the full inclusion of persons with disabilities belonging to indigenous peoples or minorities. Issues of gender have provided a conceptual framework, and the subject of double discrimination has been recognized in the disability movement and discourse. However, a fully multiple and intersectional lens related to caste, ethnicity, geography and class has still to be discussed or applied to different aspects of health, employment, technology and other services. Most available research studies and reports do not reflect intersectional perspectives. People who readily have access to ICTs are those who routinely frame any understanding of their role in society, meaning they determine how it is ultimately perceived.

    In its 2018 Concluding Observations on Nepal, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) urged that the government ‘strengthen measures, including public procurement, to grant access for all persons with disabilities… to information and communications technologies, and to low-cost software and assistive devices.’ The CRPD also emphasized the importance of inclusion to engage in education and livelihood activities, for instance by granting access to affordable mobility aids and assistive devices, technologies and services necessary for the unrestricted personal mobility of all persons with disabilities, including those living in rural areas, and belonging to indigenous peoples and minorities. Usefully, the CRPD directly addressed issues pertaining to situations of risk and humanitarian emergencies, where the government should adopt ‘an accessible communication strategy (including hotlines, a text message warning application and general manuals in sign language and Braille) and a comprehensive emergency strategy and protocols 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.

    Conclusion

    Reframing the narratives of technology to make it cost effective, geographically inclusive and culturally accessible, as well as increasing literacy and knowledge of technologies at a wider level, is crucial if the large numbers of currently underserved persons with disabilities belonging to indigenous peoples and minorities are to be reached. This includes ensuring that technological information can be explained in terms and language that local communities can understand to enable them to introduce it into their daily lives. An intersectional understanding of the systemic and structural barriers faced by indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities and other marginalized groups is necessary to deliver truly inclusive health care, employment and other services. With this in mind, technology needs to be considered in a holistic and culturally appropriate manner to make sure that no one truly is left behind.

    Photo: 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.

  • By 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 for surveillance

    In November 2019, the United States (US) Commerce Department blacklisted 28 Chinese entities for their role in the ‘implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance’ in Xinjiang. The list of banned firms now includes the regional Public Security Bureau, subordinate government agencies and a number of commercial firms, including Hikvision, Dahua Technology, iFlytek, Yixin Science and Technology Co. and others. Many of these entities are either wholly or partially state-owned and at the centre of China’s rapid development of surveillance infrastructure.

    Hikvision, the world’s largest video surveillance firm, has many contracts with police in Xinjiang, including security cameras at some of the internment camps where over 1 million Uyghurs have been forcibly detained, as well as big data centres and drone operations. In fact, since Chen Quanguo, the architect of these mass 123China: International firms are benefiting from Chinese technologies used to persecute Uyghurs and other minorities surveillance and detention policies, assumed the role of Xinjiang Party Secretary, a position he had previously held in Tibet, Hikvision and Dahua Technology have won more than US$1 billion in government contracts in the region. Despite this, and even as the US was banning Hikvision for its role in human rights abuses, news reports were emerging that the US government had itself been a repeat customer, with thousands of the cameras produced by these companies still installed in military facilities across the country.

    Huawei, the telecommunications giant embroiled in numerous legal battles with the US over espionage and national security concerns, likewise has extensive government contracts with the Public Security Bureau in Xinjiang, including the establishment of an ‘intelligent security industry’ innovation lab. However, Huawei has previously misrepresented the extent of its partnerships with the security sector in the region to hide involvement in human rights violations. This happened, for example, before the British House of Commons in June 2019 and, despite these human rights concerns and pressure from its intelligence allies, in January 2020 the British government initially announced it would allow Huawei a limited role in the development of 5G networks in the United Kingdom (UK). It then reversed its stance in July 2020, following new sanctions imposed on Huawei by the US government in May. However, the British change of heart was not motivated by Huawei’s involvement in Xinjiang, but rather by other diplomatic and domestic security concerns. Other Chinese technology firms involved in Xinjiang include Megvii Technology, SenseTime and ByteDance, which is the parent company of the popular video-sharing app TikTok.

    A November 2019 leak of internal Communist Party documents, obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, reveals how many of these companies are using big data and AI to perfect new forms 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, iris scans, voice recordings and DNA samples, all of which have been forcibly mass collected from Uyghurs and other minorities across Xinjiang and elsewhere in China. In this context, Xinjiang has become a laboratory of sorts for the Chinese government: in other words, the mass internment of Uyghurs and other minority groups is both fuelled by the rise in technology and feeding into its evolution in an authoritarian feedback loop.

    The technologies tested on and used against minority populations in Xinjiang and across China are also increasingly being deployed outside the country. As China rushes to be the world leader in AI, for example, it has taken to exporting its knowledge and tools. According to Freedom House, out of some 65 countries it surveyed in 2018, 18 were exploiting Chinese AI technology to control and monitor their populations. Many, unsurprisingly, are also countries with poor human rights records of abusing their ethnic and religious minority or indigenous populations, from Pakistan to Zimbabwe. In January 2019, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro sent a delegation to China to learn about surveillance technologies, and discussed a bill to make facial recognition surveillance compulsory. Worryingly, the Chinese firm Cloudwalk has agreed a deal with the Zimbabwe authorities, whereby it will receive the biometric data of millions of Zimbabweans in order to help improve the recognition of persons with darker skin tones by its AI technologies. This will strengthen China’s own surveillance technologies, as well as those of other governments that are clients of the firm.

    At the same time, companies and universities from countries that supposedly respect human rights have contributed to the development of, or made economic investments in some of these technologies. This arguably makes them parties to human rights violations.

    Global accomplices: the US and European firms benefitting from human rights abuses

    The United Nations (UN) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights call on businesses to prevent and mitigate the actual and potential human rights abuses associated with their business practices, with additional international frameworks placing further emphasis on technology and human rights.

    In May 2019, for example, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) adopted Recommendations on Artificial Intelligence, citing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which establishes the rights to privacy, freedom of religion or belief, and prohibits discrimination and arbitrary detention, among others. China, as an OECD member, however, has not endorsed these recommendations.

    Because of mounting evidence of actual human rights abuses associated with these technologies in Xinjiang, and arguably the difficulty of separating legitimate technological developments by many Chinese firms from their potential for abusive applications, it is almost impossible for any such partnerships or investments not to be in violation of human rights standards. And yet many firms in the US and Europe have done business with these Chinese technology entities, profiting from what the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has called a ‘no rights zone’.

    Images from a study in 2013 on 3-D human facial images / BMC Bioinformatics, sourced from the New York Times

    In February 2019, Massachusetts-based biotechnology firm Thermo Fisher Scientific announced it would end sales of its genetic sequencing equipment in Xinjiang but does not appear to have stated conclusively whether it will end sales of its products to other areas in China. Thermo Fisher is not alone in assisting China with DNA sequencing. Yale University School of Medicine Emeritus Professor Kenneth Kidd has also collaborated with the Chinese Ministry of Public Security in Uyghur-targeted genetic research, but claimed he thought the genetic data had been sampled with consent. Although Kidd’s research partnership with the Chinese government had begun in 2010, before mass internment, even a cursory understanding of China’s abusive policies towards minorities should have raised red flags concerning the nature of such collaboration. The German Max Planck Society has also supported genetic research in China. Although they are no longer involved in this research, the negative impact has already been done. China, for its part, has used the genetic technology and skills it has developed in partnership with these groups to experiment with predictive technologies capable of determining from a DNA sample whether someone is a Uyghur, and even to produce a computer-generated map of that person’s face.

    At the same time, through companies like iFlytek, Megvii and SenseTime, China has developed advanced AI voice and facial recognition technologies to monitor and control the Uyghur population. Again, such firms have also entered into partnerships with Western institutions. For instance, in 2018 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launched research partnerships with iFlytek and SenseTime, both of which have since been blacklisted in the US over human rights concerns. In February 2020, MIT cancelled its partnership with iFlytek, but did not say why: although it announced in October 2019 that it was reviewing its partnership with SenseTime, at the time of writing it appears to still be under review.

    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), a state-owned military contractor which happens to own a significant stake in Hikvision. CETC is also behind the development of a major predictive policing system identified in a May 2019 report by Human Rights Watch as one of the main systems used for mass surveillance and detention in Xinjiang.

    The American firms Seagate Technologies and Western Digital Corp have sold hard drives to Hikvision and other surveillance firms operating in Xinjiang but have denied their culpability, with one Western Digital spokesperson claiming that, while they recognized ‘the gravity of the allegations related to surveillance in the Xinjiang Province’, the company did not sell its products to the Chinese government. This defence is hollow in light of the responsibilities of these firms under international human rights frameworks to mitigate actual and potential human rights abuses associated with their business practices, given the impossibility of separating the actions of private and state-ownedfirms in the context of China.

    Similarly, Hewlett Packard owns nearly 50 per cent of New H3C Technologies Co. Ltd, which develops tools for law enforcement, with a November 2019 Wall Street Journal report identifying several internment camps in Aksu as customers of this technology. But while a spokesperson for Hewlett Packard Enterprise confirmed that IT equipment had been sold to authorities in Xinjiang, it attempted to distance itself, noting it was not aware of specific transactions and would be looking into it.

    China’s development of abusive technologies has not only been fuelled by partnerships with technology firms and researchers, but also investments from Western financial institutions. In March 2019, the Financial Times revealed that two major American pension funds, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System and the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System, owned tens of millions of US dollars’ worth of shares in Hikvision.

    Likewise, other major international investment firms such as Fidelity International, Aberdeen Standard Investments and Schroders, as of late 2019 held shares worth more than US$800 million in Hikvision and Dahua. Hikvision’s own website, furthermore, lists banks UBS and JP Morgan as among the company’s top 10 shareholders. And a 2017 market research report by Deutsche Bank explicitly listed the likelihood of Dahua Technology securing a ten-year government-backed tender – 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.

    What is to be done

    China’s current development and use of AI and related surveillance technologies, especially in Xinjiang, not to mention the sale of these technologies or exchange of knowledge that may contribute to abuses elsewhere, violates existing and evolving international norms and standards on technology and human rights. Foreign enterprises, investment firms and research institutions in the UK, US and elsewhere cannot continue to proclaim their ignorance of the abusive applications of these technologies in view of the mounting evidence of widespread targeting and persecution of minority populations in China, particularly Xinjiang. Those who continue to engage in business or to invest in these companies must accept their culpability in the human rights violations being carried out there at this very moment: not only the monitoring and surveillance of whole cities and their Uyghur residents, but the even worse abuses being carried out unseen in the darkness of China’s internment camps.

    Photo: Uighur women stand outside in their neighbourhood in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China / Adam Dean/Panos.

  • By 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 communities fear that the apparent ‘carte blanche’ to use all data and every technology in this context may lead to serious problems both now and long after the pandemic is over.

    Covid-19 is turning out to be an opportunity for many governments, telecommunications companies and social media groups to collect copious amounts of personal data, citing the urgent need to fight the pandemic. Both state and non-state actors have joined hands to work collaboratively and benefit from personal data as much as they can.In Pakistan, the government has been using Cell Site Location Information (CSLI) and Call Details Record (CDR) technologies to access the personal data of citizens from their cell phones and send out Covid-19 messages. An application has also been developed and launched, enabled through geotagging services, to send alerts to citizens who are entering or resident in vicinities with known cases of Covid-19.

    In Pakistan, the government has been using Cell Site Location Information (CSLI) and Call Details Record (CDR) technologies to access the personal data of citizens from their cell phones and send out Covid-19 messages. An application has also been developed and launched, enabled through geotagging services, to send alerts to citizens who are entering or resident in vicinities with known cases of Covid-19.

    Just weeks before, social media companies were meeting with the authorities to protest a sweeping new law aiming to control their activities n Pakistan. The new regulations, Citizen Protection (Against Online Harm) Rules 2020, give authorities access to their data and fine companies that do not comply. It would also create a new post, the national coordinator, who would have the power to require social media companies to take down or block content within 24 hours. We understood that companies were threatening to withdraw from Pakistan as they said that they could not function under the new legislation. I was so worried about the problematic new regulations approved by the Cabinet that I petitioned the Islamabad High Court to disallow the measure: I felt that it would have such a severe impact on the right to privacy and freedom of speech for all citizens of Pakistan, but in particular for the most vulnerable groups, including those of minority faiths, minority sects of Islam and those of no faith. That case is still pending.

    Just a few weeks later, the virus had turned every facet of life upside down. Telecommunications and social media companies have worked hand-in-hand with governments in this challenging time to convert the pandemic into opportunities to further target the public with advertising. Meanwhile governments, aside from Covid-19, have also been interested in collecting citizens’ data to use it for their national security-related interests.

    The entire stream of massive data collection by governments with the help of telecommunications companies and social media giants is a shady exercise – and entails lots of privacy related implications. Aside from the fact that most of the data is being collected without seeking prior informed consent, there are serious concerns about the integrity of data controllers and data processors, data retention, security protocols employed by the data controller and processor, oversight and remedial mechanisms.

    From the perspective of religious minority communities in Pakistan, the idea that all their data is to be made available to the state is terrifying. Pakistan has openly discriminatory laws concerning blasphemy and directly discriminates in advertising for low paid workers to be ‘non-Muslim’. Restrictions on the operations of NGOs are already very tight. Multiple serious and violent attacks on minority religious communities are common in Pakistan, and minority communities do not believe that the state’s data processing measures will ensure that their data cannot reach those who may have supported such attacks in the past. Already in a vulnerable position, any expansion of the government’s powers to collect and use personal data in the future could mean that these communities will feel the need to retreat further into isolation, communicating only amongst their own members and no longer able to feel part of Pakistan’s society as a whole.

    So, whilst the need to use the tools we have to save lives may be correct, this should be done with safeguards and limits, particularly in a context such as Pakistan where many communities already face the threat of being targeted online. If we do not consider the long-term implications of the decisions we make now around privacy, security and technology, it may be much harder to roll back these intrusions once the crisis is over.

    * This case study is adapted from a blog originally published on MRG’s website in May 2020, ‘Religious Minorities, privacy and data protection in the fight against Covid-19’.

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

Europe

  • 01
    Belgium: Digitalization to unlock human rights to sign language – Yes, but at what cost?

    By Alexandre Bloxs 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…

    1 min read

  • 02
    Bulgaria: Using information technologies to achieve positive change for Roma

    By 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…

    1 min read

  • 03
    Italy: Mining, migration and munitions in Sardinia – a linguistic minority struggles with economic decline

    By Riccardo Labianco 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…

    1 min read

  • 04
    Norway: Saami communities contend with the latest form of discrimination – ‘green colonialism’

    By 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…

    1 min read

  • By Alexandre Bloxs

    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 and features as spoken languages, including phonetic, phonemic, syllabic, morphological, syntactic, discourse and pragmatic levels of organization. I emphasize the plural of ‘languages’ as, contrary to the common belief, sign language is not universal — far from it: there are more than 200 different sign languages around the globe.

    Throughout history, and still in some regions of the world today, the use of sign languages by deaf people has been stigmatized and discriminated against. I recall my mother and grandmother, Nicoleta and Verginia respectively — both born and living in Romania during the Communist period — explaining to me how they would get their hands beaten with a stick by their teacher if they were caught signing during classes… in the Bucharest School for the Deaf. This story is just a small drop in the ocean of lived deaf experiences.

    One of the official origins of discrimination against sign language dates back to 1880 and the Second International Congress on Education for the Deaf that took place in Milan, Italy. This gathering brought together the world’s most eminent specialists on deaf education — none of them deaf themselves — to exchange and discuss the best practices for the education of the deaf. At the event’s conclusion, the congress adopted a resolution banning the use of sign language in deaf education in favour of an oral system called ‘oralism’. The message was unequivocal: sign language hinders the cognitive and linguistic development of deaf people. To strive to be a normal human being, deaf people must learn to talk.

    Consequently, for more than a century, deaf people could not use their natural language in public. At worst, its use was discriminated against, mocked and repressed; at best, it was ignored. Deaf people — commonly referred to as ‘Deaf and dumb’ — could not access quality education in their national sign languages, and therefore remained isolated from their society.

    A portrait of Alexandre Bloxs.

    The seclusion and isolation of deaf communities from information and knowledge through the medium of sign language has been progressively attenuated with the emergence of new technologies. In Belgium, it all started in the 1980s when the news on TV was interpreted in LSFB. For the first time, my deaf community could autonomously access information themselves, at the same time as their hearing counterparts.

    Later on, in the 1990s, independent remote communication between deaf people finally happened, thanks to the appearance of the fax, the SMS and the Minitel, a videotex online service accessible through telephone lines that was the world’s most successful online service prior to the worldwide web. They could contact each other without relying on a third party. Yet, it was reserved only for those who were literate, which represented a minority of the deaf community — a minority within the minority. The remaining deaf people, including my grandfather Joseph — a loyal member of his local deaf club in Liège, Belgium — used to say at the end of their weekly gathering: ‘Let’s meet here next Tuesday at eight. Don’t be late!’ Of course, they were late. Of course, my grandfather had to wait for his friends, sometimes for hours, because one friend’s car broke down or another got sick. What other options did he have? None.

    Not until the birth of the internet. Webcam. Social media. Smartphones. Big Bang! The true catalyst for the connection of deaf communities, technologies unlocked the door of the global network. We were finally free. Free to sign. Free to communicate in our preferred languages. Free to share our creativity, to share our opinions. Free to campaign online for recognition of our sign language. Technology is crucial to spread awareness of the existence of these languages and their importance for us. It is one of the keys to realizing our most fundamental human right, our right to sign.

    The emergence of the digitalization era has also made it possible for deaf people to connect outside their communities in sign language through distance interpreting. Sign language interpreters can now work remotely through Video Remote Interpreting (VRI) and Video Relay Service (VRS). VRS is a telephone service where the spoken message is relayed in sign language and vice versa. VRI means that communication takes place via a video screen and at a distance. Remote interpreting can be used for different reasons and when the interpreter is not at the same location as the users: to chat with family or friends, to participate in a meeting, to order a pizza, or to access emergency response services if there has been an accident.

    Accessing emergency response services in a timely manner is crucial and life-saving for everyone; deaf people are no exception. The European emergency phone number, 112, can be used by every European citizen in any area of the European Union (EU), at any time in emergency situations. Theoretically. Yet, accessible alternatives for persons with disabilities — meaning access by other means than voice, such as SMS, email, fax and text relay — is only supported by 22 of the 27 EU countries. When supported, some countries request additional fees to access those services. In addition, only eight of those countries offer the opportunity to contact emergency services in the national sign language through VRS, making our basic human right to access life-saving services a chimera in most parts of the EU. The current global Covid-19 pandemic actually highlights the dire predicament of deaf people and is a catalyst to enhancing our rights. In response to the pandemic, the Ukrainian government put in place a 24/7 remote interpreting service, affirming their global leadership in providing accessible emergency services to deaf people.

    Furthermore, companies, universities and public institutions have seen new market opportunities to develop signing avatars as a replacement for human sign language interpreters. The signing avatar is a 3D technology with a virtual character using sign language; however, it often operates 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 from spoken languages. While the technology has progressed and offers real potential for wider use of signing avatars, these computerized products do not surpass the natural quality and skills provided by human interpreters and translators. There is a good reason why TV broadcasts have not replaced presenters with automated voices and avatars, even though the actual state of the technology would allow it: this produces no human feelings or identification. The same goes for deaf people. We just do not want to be considered as second-class citizens any more.

    Another perverse technological development concerning deaf people is the signing glove. This is an electronic device which attempts to convert the motions of a sign language into written or spoken words. Although the idea looks promising and exciting on paper, it does not help deaf communities.

    The issue with signing gloves is dual. First, developers often do not consult deaf people through their representative organizations to check if they are properly representing the sign language. They gain applause and recognition for technologies based on an element of deaf culture, while deaf people themselves are legally and socially left behind, making it a case of cultural appropriation. Second, while the gloves are often presented as devices to improve accessibility for the deaf, it is the signers, not the hearing people, who must wear the gloves, carry the computers or modify their rate of signing: the idea being that deaf people must expend the effort to accommodate themselves to the standards of communication of the hearing person.

    Given the long history of repression of the use of sign language, making its importance for rendering deaf communities invisible to the eyes of society, technologies have been shown to be an invaluable tool for making our rights, our culture and our pride visible. Thanks to Skype, my grandfather Joseph could chat with his friends when he was unable to attend the weekly gathering at the local deaf club for health reasons; thanks to Facebook, my mother Nicoleta could share her opinions in LSFB of the most recent book she had read with the Belgian deaf community; thanks to the internet, I can use technology daily to participate in international meetings with sign language interpreters to support the global deaf community in our advocacy work for the realization of our human rights. The benefit of technology to us is inestimable.

    Yet, there is still a long way ahead in making our society fully accessible to us, with dignity and requiring no extra cost. We urgently need a shift from the 1880 Milan Congress-based mentality to the full recognition of sign language as the fundamental basis for human rights of the deaf as we strive to be full citizens of our society. Once this goal is achieved, we can finally be equal with everyone.

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

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

    Source: EU-MIDIS II (2016).

    Roma in Bulgaria

    ‘Roma’ is often used within the EU as an umbrella term for diverse groups including Gypsies, Travellers, Manouches, Ashkali, Sinti and Boyash, besides Roma (that is, Romani speakers). As in many other European states, the word Tsiganisignifies this aggregate of ethnicities in Bulgaria – a term that is seen by many community members as pejorative. However, after the ratification of the Framework Programme for Equal Integration of Roma in Bulgarian society in 1999, the term Romareplaced it in all official documents.

    There is a common language network of Romani dialects and patois that share a similar grammar and morphology, enabling Roma around the world to communicate with each other about basic things like food and family life. At the same time, the main dialects differ significantly in their phonetics and vocabulary due to the influence of the surrounding populations. Since there is no standardization of the main dialects or of the Romani written system in the country, attempts to establish Romani language teaching as an extracurricular subject in the Bulgarian school system have so far achieved little success. Moreover, a significant proportion of the population defined as Roma speak Bulgarian, Turkish or Romanian as their mother tongue, rather than Romani: many members of these groups do not self-identify as Roma themselves. Based on the language spoken at home, religion and lifestyle, it is in fact possible to distinguish five main Roma groups in Bulgaria and several other subgroups whose self-identification is distinct from Roma.

    The picture is complicated further by the absence of reliable data on the Roma population, a legacy of decades of discrimination that has resulted in their true numbers being consistently under-reported. Until recently, the most accurate figures on their size were not from the official censuses, where Roma were routinely under-counted, but in the ‘confidential reports’ drawn up by local police departments based on their surveillance of these communities, where numbers were significantly higher. Nevertheless, uncertainty around these numbers persists to this day: while the 2011 census found that 4.9 per cent of those who provided their ethnicity identified as Roma, alternative estimates suggest that the actual proportion may be as much as 10 per cent, double the official estimate.

    When it comes to the situation of the different communities in terms of poverty, basic services and other measures of social exclusion, the limited 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 with limited access to water, sanitation or electricity, the impacts translate into poor health outcomes that are reflected in an estimated life expectancy ten years below that of non-Roma. This exclusion is in large part due to their official invisibility: as many Roma live in informal settlements, it is difficult even to register their permanent addresses as a precondition to obtaining identity documents or a citizen registration number for a newborn child.

    A key element in addressing these inequalities is more accessible and inclusive education. Learning outcomes among Roma in Bulgaria are markedly lower than for their non-Roma peers. A recent survey conducted for the Trust for Social Achievement (TSA) reveals some positive trends in this regard: the proportion of people with only primary school or lower educational attainment fell from 15.3 per cent in 2011 to 5.6 per cent in 2019, while at the same time there was an increase in the share of Roma with completed university degrees (from 0.2 per cent to 1.2 per cent). Likewise, educational enrolment in the 7–15 age group rose to 92.8 per cent in 2019 from 82.8 per cent in 2011. Many problems persist, however, including high levels of school drop-out and an increase in school segregation: alarmingly, the share of Roma children enrolled in schools where Roma made up more than half of the student body increased from 31 per cent in 2011 to 47 per cent in 2019.

    Code Success: a breakthrough in IT education

    Unsurprisingly, given the broader backdrop of discrimination in Bulgaria and the barriers many face to accessing education, Roma are poorly represented in the country’s IT sector. One organization that has sought to challenge the status quo is the Code Success Foundation, with an initiative to actively target and recruit Roma children, who until now have been largely overlooked by the industry. Importantly, the project recognized that many of those it aims to reach are already on the margins of the education system and at risk of dropping out from mainstream schooling.

    As a result, it incorporated an extensive preparatory programme that includes preliminary development in ‘soft’ skills like Bulgarian, English and mathematics, as well as psychosocial support to help students navigate personal and family difficulties, before the IT training itself begins. Given that many of those enrolled may have been alienated by their own experiences at school, the teaching methodology combined a range of innovative approaches such as gamification, flipped classrooms and road-mapping. Most importantly, it was committed to the principle of equality and seeks to bring together Roma and non-Roma students from different neighbourhoods. Overall, 32 students were enrolled and 16 children completed the full course, of whom 12 succeeded on the IT fundamentals test at the Software University (a partner on the programme) and three received scholarships to continue with an additional advanced module with C# or Java.

    There were two diametrically opposed reactions from Roma communities. Some parents were hesitant and did not allow their children to be enrolled (after a successful initial screening) or made them drop out at a certain point. There was particular resistance towards the participation of Roma girls due to fears of them being subjected to violence or human trafficking. However, those children who were allowed to remain in the programme were positive and engaged, with attendance rates over 70 per cent. One of the children even graduated ‘in secret’ from his parents, since they were against his involvement but he was old enough to consent.

    The project had an added value for all enrolled children, regardless of their final assessment within the Code Success Foundation: despite high drop-out rates among their communities, they all graduated and saw their scores in Bulgarian, English and mathematics improve as well. Five are now university students and all the rest have jobs. Nevertheless, the organizers of the programme are themselves acutely aware of the fact that initiatives such as theirs can only go so far. In the words of Vesselin Drobenov, the CEO behind this project, ‘despite all the good news, the technologies are no panacea for education’. Alongside the advantages of the new technologies — increased effectiveness due to quicker access to information, new pedagogical approaches, prompt feedback and skills development relevant to today’s work market — there are some shortcomings too, such as the reduction in face-to-face communication and personal interaction.

    Perhaps the greatest challenge, however, is the unequal access to internet and IT technologies that continues to affect Roma in the country. In this context, while small initiatives such as this one can deliver extraordinary results, their impact will remain limited until there is a more fundamental transformation of Bulgarian society to ensure that the Roma population is recognized, respected and included as equal citizens.

    ‘Old technology for a new beginning’: Meeting the challenge of Covid-19

    The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has brought many of these long-standing issues around discrimination, educational exclusion and limited access to new technologies to the fore. When, in March 2020, the Bulgarian government established a national lockdown in response, the entire educational system was forced to transfer all its material online and adapt to distance learning using computers. Concerned about the educational inequalities, the Centre Amalipe, a Bulgarian Romani NGO, ran an express survey of around 200 schools which found that significant percentages of students in schools with a large proportion of vulnerable children lacked the necessary equipment and technical skills to access online education effectively. In response, it launched an appeal, ‘Old technology for a new beginning’, to collect donations of old PCs, laptops and tablets. At the same time, in neighbourhoods where there is no internet access, some educational mediators have delivered printed materials to the homes of affected children.

    There is certainly a real danger that, alongside all its direct health risks, Covid-19 could deepen existing inequalities. At the same time, it has made the questions of poverty and lack of access to proper educational services for Roma children more visible than ever. We must hope that, building on the success of activities like the Code Success initiative, the authorities take this opportunity to overcome the long-standing barriers to schooling and technology Roma have faced to deliver equitable and inclusive education for all at this time of crisis.

    * The author would like to express his gratitude to TSA for providing access to (at the time of writing) unpublished data. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily express the opinions of TSA and Global Metrix.

    Photo: An education mediator and a member from the Roma community in Bulgaria carry computer equipment / Amalipe.

  • By Riccardo Labianco

    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 employers in Domusnovas is a bomb manufacturing plant: around 300 people work there. Some of the armaments produced in the factory have ended up in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where they have been used by these states in their military campaign in Yemen. In the summer of 2019, however, the Italian government decided to halt further transfers of bombs to these countries due to the large number of civilian casualties, widespread destruction and breaches of international law taking place in Yemen. An added justification, put forward by Luigi Di Maio, at the time deputy prime minister, was that this would help stem immigration from conflict-affected countries to Italy. In Domusnovas, however, the export ban had a much more immediate effect – suddenly, the jobs of hundreds of workers were under threat.

    A history of marginalization and economic decline

    A linguistic minority, Sardinians can trace their presence on the island back to the Neolithic period. While Italian is now widely used, Sardinia’s native language, Sardu, has continued to develop along with the culture of this island’s people. A 2007 survey found that over 68 per cent of those sampled claimed to speak Sardu and another 29 per cent to understand it, despite not using it frequently, suggesting that the language remains an important feature for the majority of Sardinians. Though classified by UNESCO as ‘definitely endangered’, a number of measures have been taken to ensure its survival. In addition to Italy’s National Law No. 482 (1999) recognizing the safeguarding and promotion of minority languages, including Sardu, in 2018 the Region of Sardinia enacted Regional Law No. 22: this outlined a proactive policy for the preservation and promotion of the linguistic identity of the Sardinian people through the teaching of the language in schools and its use in public offices, among other provisions.

    Nevertheless, to fully develop, a language’s speakers need to be able to live and prosper in the area where it is spoken. However, among other factors, migration to other areas of Italy, where Sardu is not spoken, has undermined the efforts to safeguard and revitalize the language. While the lack of economic opportunities has been a major driver of movement away from the island since the end of the nineteenth century, in part due to the marginalization of the region, the Italian government periodically sought to contain migrant flows by creating employment in the region in sectors like mining.

    Sulcis-Iglesiente, like other parts of Sardinia, has hosted mines since antiquity. From the mid-nineteenth century, mining intensified and industrialized until it was widely seen as a critical part of the region’s economy. Over time, however, the extraction of zinc, lead, coal and other resources progressively became more expensive and less profitable for various reasons, including the low quality of the minerals in the area. Demand therefore decreased and with it the number of jobs in mining, falling from around 9,000 workers in 1951 to less than 2,000 by 1979. The vanishing job prospects in Sulcis-Iglesiente forced many residents to look for jobs in the so-called continente (the continent) — a term used by Sardinians to signify the rest of Italy, as well as abroad.

    From mining to bomb making: Domusnovas plant today

    The history of mining in the area, as well as its steady decline, explains why there is now a bomb factory in Domusnovas. The mining sector fuelled a series of satellite activities, including the production of industrial explosives in a plant at Domusnovas. This came to an end in 2001 when the company that owned it, Società Esplosivi Industriali SpA, converted its production from civilian to military purposes. In 2010, the plant’s ownership passed to a new company, Rheinmetall Weapons Munitions (RWM), controlled by a German multinational corporation involved in the manufacturing of armaments, Rheinmetall Defence.

    On the face of it, business for Rheinmetall Defence was booming, with global sales worth more than €3.2 billion in 2018. That same year, RWM’s CEO announced plans to expand Domusnovas’s plant further, with an investment of €35 million and the creation of between 150 and 200 new jobs. Then came the Italian government’s decision in July 2019 to halt the export of bombs to Saudi Arabia and the UAE — a decision that cost around 130 of RWM’s employees their jobs as demand immediately fell. For local residents working at the plant, these forced redundancies were their worst nightmare.

    The case of Domusnovas is a complex one. On the one hand, Sulcis-Iglesiente’s history of failing economic prospects and high unemployment has led some to prioritize jobs first and foremost, even favouring the production of armaments implicated in the suffering of innocent civilians elsewhere. Nevertheless, since armaments manufacturing in Domusnovas began, a number of civil society organizations and public figures, such as the local bishop, have opposed it and called for the development of other sources of employment in the region.

    Investing in a better future for Sulcis-Iglesiente

    One of the most prominent groups in the movement is the Comitato Riconversione RWM (RWM Reconversion Committee), established in 2017 and working with other associations to promote sustainable and peaceful development for Sulcis-Iglesiente. It has been engaged in a series of protests, advocacy and, more recently, legal activities directed at both local government bodies and ordinary citizens, with the aim of pushing for the military plant to be converted back to civilian use: for example, they envision that the workers at the plant, many of whom have chemical and steel-manufacturing skills, could be involved in the production of electric car batteries, a sector that has been growing recently. The committee also proposes to look beyond Domusnovas’s plant itself. It explicitly supports the idea that the development of Sulcis-Iglesiente should be based on other activities, such as agriculture and sustainable tourism. This idea is in line with what some experts say: the area needs investments in infrastructure and renewed efforts to diversify its economy.

    This is not a view shared by everyone: for example, some workers are sceptical that the plant can readily be repurposed for other forms of production. Nevertheless, there is broad agreement that the situation in Domusnovas can only be resolved through a systematic, long-term approach that embraces the enjoyment of a range of different rights in the region. This means that, while the Italian government should be able to take steps to halt the suffering in Yemen and promote peace in line with its international commitments, Sardinian workers must also have the right to secure employment in the area where they can speak their own language.

    It is perhaps not surprising that, given its long history of economic stagnation and governmental neglect, employment and technology have come to intersect in such a precarious and problematic fashion in Domusnovas. The current situation needs to be understood in this context. While it is understandable that the province’s dependence on the production of armaments is a source of profound moral unease, particularly their deployment in a military campaign that has caused countless civilian deaths in Yemen and pushed the country to the brink of collapse, the Italian government should now focus on promoting a broader plan for sustainable development for Sulcis-Iglesiente and the Sardu-speaking population.

    * The author would like to thank Mr Arnaldo Scarpa, spokesperson of the Comitato Riconversione RWM, and Ms Francesca Sanna, PhD Candidate in History and Civilization, Université de Paris.

    Photo: Rusty mine carts on abandoned tracks, Ingortosu Arbus, Sardinia, Italy / Marco Ledda.

  • By 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 as part of Saami traditional lands, Repparfjorden has also been designated as a national salmon fjord, fed by a number of smaller watercourses. Nevertheless, despite many years of resistance from the Saami parliament in Norway, local communities and environmental groups, the Norwegian government approved the concession in February 2019. The only way to stop the mine now is through a legal battle in the courts.

    In the meantime, should the Nussir mining process proceed under the current permit, preparations are under way for large-scale protests. This is not the first time the community has been forced to take action against the expropriation of their land in the name of development. In the 1980s, the controversial Alta hydroelectric power station triggered a series of highly publicized protests that, while failing to prevent the dam’s construction, had a lasting impact on the status of Saami rights in Norway. Among other issues, it contributed to the country’s subsequent ratification of International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention No. 169 on indigenous and tribal peoples.

    Saami are hoping that protests could again bring visibility to what would be a catastrophic development for their community.

    No machine should be allowed into Nussir before the case has gone through the court system. 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.

    Beaska Niillas, Saami activist and politician

    An added challenge is that, notwithstanding the negative implications of the mine for the local ecosystem, many of its proponents have sought to justify it in environmental terms. For example, the Norwegian trade minister Torbjørn Røe Isaksen has pointed to the use of copper in electric vehicles, wind turbines and other ‘green’ technologies.

    Unsurprisingly, Niillas regards these arguments with some scepticism. ‘It looks like the state uses the climate change argument when there is a benefit to the capitalist economic interest,’ he says. ‘In my opinion, in reality they are usually not so interested in driving climate-friendly politics.

    Renewable resources such as solar, wind, tidal, hydro, biomass and geothermal energy are growing rapidly, and are now accepted to be an essential element in climate change mitigation. However, these solutions require a considerable supply of a range of materials, including copper, the production of which is highly intensive in terms of energy consumption and emissions. The Nussir mine would have an immediate negative impact on the fragile Arctic environment. The dumping of the waste from the mine would be harmful to the fjord, the reindeer and the fish. The mine, its widespread infrastructure and its noise pollution would reduce reindeer-herding pastures to a minimum in the area. The implications for sea salmon fishing could also be catastrophic. And the people who would suffer the most, while benefiting the least, are Saami.

    Representatives of the Saami parliament highlighted the devastating impacts the mine would have, not only on the local environment but also on the livelihoods that depend on it, including reindeer herding and salmon fishing. The Repparfjorden area is an important calving and summer pasture for the reindeer in Fiettar district, whose long-established life cycles may now be disrupted by this development.

    Environmentalists are also worried about the impact of the Nussir mining on sea life, particularly through the dumping of mining waste in the oceans. Norway, along with Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Turkey, is one of just four countries in the world where mining companies are allowed to dispose of mining waste in the sea. These mine tailings risk contaminating fish stocks in surrounding areas with heavy metals such as mercury, as well as disturbing spawning grounds, with devastating impacts on both the quantity and quality of local fish supply.

    The implications, at both a community and national level, could be profound. Silje Karine Muotka, a member of the Saami parliament of Norway, argues that the country’s fishing industry could be badly hit if the mine goes ahead. ‘I am also really worried about the impact of mining on the fish population, on the reputation of Norway as a fish-producing country and even on the ability to sell fish as human food internationally’, she says.

    The Repparfjorden case is not the only headache for Saami people. Recently a southern Saami reindeer-herding village lost a court battle against the Fosen Vind wind turbine company in the Storheia area of Trondheim in central Norway. The company is now planning to build a wind farm on the community’s reindeer-herding pastures: once built, it will be the largest operating onshore wind farm in Europe. This is part of a wider shift across Scandinavia to wind farms. While they may offer the possibility of a cleaner energy supply, at present hundreds of wind turbines are being built with little appreciation of the potential negative impacts on grazing and migration for reindeer populations — or the Saami communities which depend on them. Research suggests that reindeer movement is dramatically curtailed in areas close to wind farms. Analysing data gathered from GPS-trackers for reindeer, one study found that the construction of two relatively small wind farms in northern Sweden led to a decline by as much as 76 per cent in the use by herds of their original migration routes.

    Despite these setbacks, Muotka says that the Saami parliament is now preparing its next steps with regard to the Nussir mine, including a study on its potential impact on Saami livelihoods. Every argument, every piece of evidence and every aspect of traditional knowledge will be needed if the community decides to take on the Norwegian government in the courts.

    Photo: A Sami woman stands surrounded by reindeer during the autumn migration in Arnoy, Norway / Abbie Trayler-Smith/Panos.

Middle East and North Africa

  • 01
    Egypt: Copts continue to suffer the effects of hate speech online

    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…

    1 min read

  • 02
    Iran: For religious minorities, biometric identity cards threaten to become a new tool for surveillance and discrimination

    By 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…

    1 min read

  • 03
    Iraq and Syria: Documenting human rights violations in conflict – the Ceasefire online reporting tool

    By 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…

    1 min read

  • 04
    Lebanon: For Syrian refugees, discrimination is the greatest barrier to accessing Covid-19 testing

    By 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…

    1 min read

  • 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 the prohibition of hate speech, the ways different governments respond to the threat it poses vary widely — and in some cases governments can actively contribute to its proliferation online.

    In Egypt, hate speech persists for a variety of structural reasons. These include the inability of the state, through its justice and public educational institutions, to mediate differences between ethnic and religious groups, not to mention its failure to institutionalize minority rights, thus keeping communities in a perpetual state of low-level conflict. The lack of legislation defining hate speech, let alone prohibiting it, has meant it remains a grey area in Egyptian law, with no measures in place to monitor or prevent it.

    This has left intercommunal relations vulnerable to manipulation, as is evident in mainstream media where, depending on the political context, different messages are communicated at different times, including hate speech. A case in point is the Al Youm Al Sabi online news site and newspaper, which in November 2019 featured a piece by the chief editor entitled ‘Muslim Brotherhood, Jews and Shiites: The trinity of evil in the world’, before widespread condemnation led to the piece being taken down from the site. However, on social media, the situation is more fluid as threads of hate speech can go unnoticed, despite the harm they cause.

    The attacks against the Copts of Kom al-Raheb

    Kom al-Raheb, a village in Samalut, Minya, is home to around 2,500 Copts. For years they have not been able to get a formal permit to build their church. Part of the reason is the resistance of some Muslims in the village on the basis that the presence of a church would be against their religious beliefs. With no other church nearby, however, the Copts eventually decided to use a house for prayer. On 10 December 2018, the first mass was held in the building, only to end with security forces demanding its immediate closure, deeming that it was illegal to pray in a building that had not been registered as a church. This was despite the fact that Law 80/2016 on church construction, passed two years before, does not view the holding of a mass in a house as illegal, and indeed bans the closure of any place which has religious rituals conducted in it.

    Copts in Kom el Raheb, Minya holding a funeral in the street, behind their only local church building, even though the church has been shut down for months by police pic.twitter.com/9O2WQAIgBS

    — marina (@Crazy_Copt) July 17, 2019

    The next day, Copts stood outside the building to protest its closure and to prevent the removal of the electricity and water meters by the local authority, which would have effectively rendered the building uninhabitable. These protests were followed by violent attacks by some Muslim residents on Coptic homes in the village. Importantly, some of the assailants were incited through Facebook to engage in these assaults, using a number of different narratives that sought to exploit communal tensions. First, they actively exploited religion to mobilize other Muslims, using verses from the Qur’an to justify their claims. They also identified themselves as representing the pure faith which, they argued, bans any temples or churches for non-Muslims. By contrast, other Muslims who felt that their Christian neighbours had a right to build their own place of worship were called ‘traitors’ and accused of accepting ‘hush money’ to allow the church to be built. The perpetrators on Facebook also argued that the Copts had brought ‘strife’ to the village by wishing to build a church, calling them ‘dogs’ who would have to pay ‘a heavy price’.

    While this undoubtedly constitutes the sort of ‘incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence’ that is explicitly prohibited by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), contributing directly to the attacks that ensued, in the absence of effective legislation incidents such as this can easily go unpunished. While the Egyptian Constitution was amended in 2019 specifically to criminalize incitement to hatred, there is no corresponding provision that punishes hate speech. Article 98(f) of the Penal Code, commonly known as the blasphemy law, punishes speech that constitutes ‘contempt for one of the divine religions’. While this law is frequently used to target freedom of expression and any perceived criticism of the official interpretation of Islam, it fails to protect citizens belonging to other faiths as well as those such as agnostics and atheists who do not subscribe to any religion at all. While a number of laws were developed to deal with online crimes, including Law 175/2018 (the IT law) that came into effect in August 2018, just a few months before the attacks in Samalut, none of these laws have been invoked in the official response.

    Following the attacks, police forces arrested individuals from both sides and then established a ‘reconciliation session’ — an extra-legal proceeding commonly used in the wake of communal violence that typically ‘mediates’ an informal resolution between groups without distinguishing between the perpetrators of the violence (usually belonging to the majority) and its victims (overwhelmingly members of minorities). The session ruled that the church issue be completely left to the state authorities, despite their failure to allow its construction for the previous three decades, and that no party should intervene in the case again. Hence, the de facto decision was that the Copts would continue to be denied a place of worship for fear of provoking some of their Muslim neighbours — a situation that favoured the existing balance of power in the village rather than the rights of the minority.

    Indeed, what is online is impacted by that which is offline and impacts it in return. On the one hand, as the Kom al-Raheb case shows, social media can be a catalyst for hate speech and violent attacks when left unchecked — hence the need for more effective monitoring and reporting of hate speech online. At the same time, beyond the internet, there is a wider failure to ensure that rights are guaranteed for all, including the rights of religious minorities to practise their religion.

    Local authorities repeatedly favour decisions that maintain the existing status quo and often perpetuate discrimination against minorities. In some parts of the country, there is also a social acceptance of negative speech against non-Muslims that is not being adequately challenged by Egypt’s educational institutions. This in turn is reflected in the absence of meaningful institutional mechanisms to identify and punish hate speech against minorities. While there are many important steps that can be taken to curb the prevalence of hate speech on social media, including systematic monitoring and reporting, there also needs to be a broader transformation of Egyptian politics and society in general.

    With clear legal protections for all religions in place and a concrete commitment to minority rights, as well as a just and equitable system of governance that respects human rights, hate speech on Egyptian social media would likely be far less prevalent than it is today. In the meantime, the situation online will continue to replicate the same climate of hostility and discrimination for minorities that they experience in their daily lives.

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

  • By 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 the collection of physical data, such as fingerprints, iris scans or voice samples, which are unique to an individual. It is often lauded for the benefits it offers in terms of enhancing security, improving user experience and preventing fraud.

    However, the adoption of biometric technology also poses significant challenges and threats to privacy and human rights. Some biometric identifiers can reveal sensitive information about a person — such as health status or ethnic background — which can be misused in discriminatory ways. If biometric identifiers are used in multiple types of governmental transactions and linked to a central database, they can also provide significant and detailed information about a person’s activities. Without strong protections in place, biometric data collected consensually for one purpose (such as identity verification) can easily be used for other purposes (for example, surveillance) without the knowledge or consent of the people involved.

    In 2015, the Iranian government began phasing in a biometric national identity card: this is now the card issued to all new applicants and to anyone renewing an expired national identity card. The card features a smart ‘chip’ and stores biometric data including iris scans, fingerprints and facial images. The smart identity card, or the 11-digit number associated with it, are required in order to access a whole range of government services — from obtaining a driver’s licence to accessing a pension. Iran’s banking sector has also shifted towards the adoption of biometric methods and now requires customers to provide their smart identity card in order to carry out many banking transactions. More worryingly, Iranian officials have also announced plans that would require citizens to verify their identity using the smart identity card in order to access the domestic internet network.

    In a country where citizens are already subjected to high levels of surveillance, the introduction of the smart identity card raises significant concerns. The Iranian government has already used facial recognition technology to identify and arrest protesters and political dissidents, and the collection of biometric data potentially gives it the tools to do so even more efficiently. If biometric identifiers were made a requirement in order to access the internet, Iranians who express dissenting opinions online could be very quickly identified and targeted by the state.

    Moreover, mandating the use of the smart identity card across a range of sectors could give the government access to very comprehensive information about a citizen’s activities, particularly in the absence of legislation restricting the collation and use of such data. While a draftPersonal Data Protection Act has been under discussion in Iran, human rights groups have criticized it for allowing personal data to be processed without individuals’ consent for vaguely defined ‘security’ purposes, and for giving individuals linked to the security apparatus power to oversee the collection of data.

    Recently, Iran’s new smart identity card has also turned into a vehicle of discrimination. In January 2020, the Iranian government ceased allowing applicants for the card to choose ‘Other’ in the religion field on the application form, which had previously been one of the available options. Instead, applicants must now choose one of the four officially recognized religions given on the form – Islam, Christianity, Judaism or Zoroastrianism. This leaves members of smaller religious minorities with only two options: either lie about their religious identity or be prevented from obtaining the card.

    Iran’s unrecognized religious minorities — which include the country’s sizeable Bahá’í community, as well as smaller communities such as Mandaeans and Yarsan — are already subjected to many forms of official and unofficial discrimination. They do not benefit from the legal protections offered to members of the four religions named in the Iranian Constitution. They are excluded from running for political leadership positions and often denigrated by Iran’s religious establishment. Some have faced attacks on their houses of worship or have been arbitrarily imprisoned as a result of their beliefs.

    The Bahá’í community faces particularly harsh persecution from the state. The official position of the Iranian government is that the Bahá’í faith is a ‘man-made religion’ and a political movement disguising itself as a spiritual community. A 1991 government memorandum, signed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, called for Bahá’ís to be dealt with in such a way ‘that their progress and development shall be blocked’ and the government actively excludes them from higher education and employment. Bahá’ís are also prevented from attending religious and social gatherings, and their homes are regularly raided, with their religious books and items confiscated.

    While the government did not make any official announcement to accompany the removal of the ‘Other’ religion field, the change in policy seems to have been spurred by comments from a conservative member of parliament, Mohammad Javad Abtahi. In January 2019, he criticized the inclusion of an ‘Other’ option in the identification card’s religion field, claiming that it meant the government was bestowing legitimacy on ‘deviant’ sects. He then wrote to the interior minister demanding a review of the application process for the smart identity card and the removal of the ‘Other’ option.

    Since Bahá’í teachings forbid their followers from denying their faith, a Bahá’í citizen who wishes to remain faithful to the religion has no choice but to forfeit the smart identity card.

    This has wide-ranging implications for access to social and economic rights. The card and its unique identifier are needed to complete an array of essential functions, such as obtaining a driver’s licence, applying for a credit card, buying property and enrolling in university. If, on the other hand, Bahá’í report themselves as Muslims in order to obtain the card, the Iranian government would be equipped with statistical data that it could potentially use to deny their presence and distort the true religious make-up of the country’s population.

    As Iran continues to expand the usage and applications of biometric identifiers, the full implications of the transition to the smart identity card are yet to be completely understood. However, developments so far should serve as an early warning of the ways in which biometric technology can be used to accelerate discrimination, exclusion and surveillance if it is not well regulated within a rights-respecting legal framework.

    Photo: National ID card of the Islamic Republic of Iran / Wikimedia Commons.

  • By 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 so-called Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and other armed groups from 2014 onwards saw patterns of marginalization of the country’s ethnic and religious minorities transform into widespread attacks and even genocide against those communities. Ethnic and religious minorities were uprooted en masse from their historical homelands and subjected to violations, including killings, abductions, property destruction, and attacks on their religious and cultural heritage. Footage of these atrocities was disseminated widely across social media platforms, which ISIS used with shocking efficiency to spread its ideology and recruit new members.

    Monitoring violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in conflict zones often poses immense challenges. For one thing, the existence of armed violence often prevents human rights organizations, journalists, UN agencies and others engaged in monitoring from accessing the territories where violations are occurring. Local human rights actors, for their part, may become displaced or preoccupied with their own survival needs. When they do choose to continue their work, they operate at increased risk to themselves, often facing death threats from armed groups for speaking out or exposing violations. In situations where minorities are disconnected from centres of influence or lack organizations defending their rights, violations can go completely unreported. Moreover, the high degree of political polarization that accompanies conflict and attempts by various actors to control the narrative of events often lead to difficulty in gathering accurate and impartial information on the human rights situation.

    However, this does not mean that there is no information being produced in such settings. Thanks to the spread of mobile internet, social media platforms and smartphone technologies, ordinary civilians are able to document developments on the ground and share them with the outside world at the click of a button — even in the world’s most dangerous conflict zones. Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms are often awash with first-hand information, photos and videos coming directly from witnesses to violations. The content of social media is becoming difficult to ignore, as seen in the rise of open-source intelligence (OSINT) approaches. However, this content is often not in a format that can be harnessed effectively for human rights advocacy. Information shared online can be difficult to verify and often lacks crucial details needed to establish the nature of the violation and hold perpetrators to account. Moreover, intersecting privacy rules on a multitude of platforms mean that vast amounts of data are often not easily accessible to relevant human rights actors, such as international bodies.

    Screenshot of the Ceasefire online reporting tool / Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights.

    These challenges provided the impetus behind the creation of the Ceasefire online reporting tool, a digital platform that seeks to enable ‘civilian-led monitoring’ of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in conflict settings. Piloted in Iraq as part of a joint project by Minority Rights Group International (MRG) and the Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights, the tool seeks to bridge the gap between traditional human rights data collection and unbounded crowdsourcing. Though accessible to anyone with an internet connection, the tool prompts users to report violations in a way that conforms with international legal standards and increases the future usability of the data.

    The core component of the tool is a bilingual (Arabic-English) reporting form, which permits users at a minimum to specify the title, description, category and location of the human rights violation. The category function, which prompts users to choose from a predefined list of internationally recognized human rights violations, enables easy analysis and filtering of the data. In addition, the expanded version of the form asks for additional details about the victim, witness, consequences, motive and perpetrator of the violence, prompting users to supply information that could be important in determining the nature of the abuse according to international standards. For example, users are asked to give any details that would suggest the attack was carried out due to the victim’s ethnicity, religion or culture – which can be used to establish the threshold for hate crimes, ethnic cleansing or genocide. Users can also attach photos and other documentary evidence to their reports or include links to YouTube footage or media coverage, which helps make the information verifiable.

    Reports submitted through the form are stripped of personally identifying information and plotted onto a live, interactive map visible on the tool’s landing page, which shows the distribution of violations by location and type. Sensitive data, such as names and contact details of victims, witnesses and perpetrators, is stored securely on a secondary server in case it is needed for future follow-up or court proceedings.

    However, civilian-led monitoring is not simply about providing new technological tools – it is also about empowering civilians themselves so they can use such tools effectively. Through partnerships with human rights NGOs, including minority-led organizations, MRG and Ceasefire conduct regular in-country training events for civilian activists. At the training sessions, participants are not only taught how to use the online tool, but also given a thorough grounding in international human rights concepts and components of strong human rights reporting, including interview techniques, victim protection practices and verification strategies. Also known as ‘bounded crowdsourcing’, the logic of training smaller groups, who in turn train others, leads to the formation of a critical mass of skilled activists and organizations and results in a higher quality of human rights documentation.

    Since the tool’s launch in February 2017, more than 3,700 violation reports have been submitted by civilian activists. The online tool has thus served as a window into patterns of violations taking place as part of the conflict in Iraq that would otherwise go unreported. For example, through long-term partnerships and trainings with women’s rights activists in Iraq, the tool has enabled the production of detailed information on the relationship between armed conflict and family-based violence, an under-studied and under-documented phenomenon. These cases led to the publication of a series of three reports on the topic, and the design of new interventions providing direct support to refugee and displaced women facing gender-based violence.

    In situations of escalating violence, the online tool offers the possibility of obtaining crucial information from the ground in real time. When large-scale protests erupted in Iraq in late 2018, reports of excessive use of force by security forces against peaceful protesters began to appear on the online tool. These cases were incorporated into a wider report on repression of civilian activists in Iraq, which was then used as a basis for urgent appeals and advocacy pushes at the UN Human Rights Council and in other forums.

    According to the director of an Iraqi NGO, the value of the online tool lies in its ability to function as a secure outlet for activists engaged in human rights documentation in highly volatile contexts. ‘In the current situation in Iraq, the major risk facing human rights activists and defenders is reporting violations. Many activists have faced threats and blackmailing for their reports, particularly if their identity is revealed. The online tool helps them prevent these risks as they easily use the tool and it is anonymous.’

    Building on its initial successes in Iraq, the tool has since been expanded to other contexts in the region. Following the Turkish invasion of Afrin in north-western Syria and the mass expulsion of the city’s mainly Kurdish population, the tool served as a crucial platform to document the violations taking place against the population of the area in the midst of a near-total media blackout. According to a Syrian Kurdish activist from Afrin, ‘Up to now, all independent journalists are barred from entering Afrin, so there are no media or human rights reports covering the situation there. With the Ceasefire tool, we were able to design forms specific to the area and give people on the ground the option of reporting violations over the internet. As a result, we are monitoring the situation without exposing researchers to the dangers of entering the territory.’ Civilian activists were also able to uncover patterns of attack by Turkish-backed Syrian armed groups against Yezidi, Christian and Alawite villages around Afrin, about which very little is known internationally.

    While the online tool has provided a way to surmount some of the obstacles to human rights monitoring in conflict, the work has not been without its challenges. Despite all reassurances of confidentiality, victims can still be afraid to report violations — fearing backlash from their families, their communities or armed groups. Where the authorities deliberately shut down or throttle internet access, there can be delays in urgent reports being uploaded online. Moreover, in situations of prolonged violence, even the most committed activists can begin to lose hope that an end is in sight — decreasing their motivation to go on with the documentation work. These challenges prove that technology alone is not enough to resolve the enduring problems of human rights. Sustainable change is unlikely to be achieved unless technology is deployed in conjunction with other measures — from political pressure to legal advocacy and education. However, harnessing technology as part of a multi-pronged approach can offer a modern strategy for dealing with modern challenges, which continue to change the landscape of human rights activism.

    Photo: Yazidi men rebuild religious temples that were destroyed by ISIS in the town of Bashiqa, Iraq / Andrea DiCenzo/dpa.

  • By 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 every stage during a disease outbreak, as it allows for the mapping of who has a disease as well as who is at risk of becoming infected. Without diagnostic testing, it is impossible to strategize responses effectively.

    The current Covid-19 pandemic demonstrates this clearly. The disease, which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), first emerged in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 before spreading rapidly across the world. By 11 March 2020, it was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). With governments racing to slow the spread of the virus, most recognize that access to testing is a key measure that must be at the core of their responses. This is an approach backed by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO, who stated: ‘Our key message is: test, test, test’, during a press briefing on 16 March 2020.

    Across the world there have been different barriers to putting this into practice, not only technical barriers but also social, political and economic ones. These issues are especially evident in Lebanon. Though it hosted significant numbers of Palestinian refugees before the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011, since then its refugee population has risen substantially. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are more than 1 million Syrian refugees registered in Lebanon, though different agencies estimate the true number to be in the region of 1.5 million. As a result, Lebanon is now the country with the highest per capita refugee population in the world. The large Syrian refugee population, many of whom are unregistered, were already struggling with the effects of years of discrimination before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Covid-19 in Lebanon

    Lebanon recorded its first case of Covid-19 on 21 February 2020 and went into partial lockdown after three weeks, closing schools, shutting its borders, and banning new arrivals by air, land and sea. It also introduced restrictions on movement, only allowing people to leave their houses to get essential goods or to perform some forms of key work, including food production, agriculture and health care delivery.

    The Covid-19 pandemic hit Lebanon during one of its worst economic crises in decades. The country has long struggled to finance its health care system, following the end of the civil war and subsequent years of privatization. As a result, the national health system now finds itself under-resourced and insufficiently funded, struggling to maintain a proper supply chain of medicines and equipment at a time when the need could not be more acute.

    According to UNHCR, there are more than one million refugees registered in Lebanon.

    Lebanon has focused its Covid-19 response on providing testing for individuals who present symptoms, as well as conducting random community testing. The government announced that testing would be available to everyone for free at Rafik Al-Hariri hospital, the country’s main public hospital, located in Beirut. While resources in the state’s health system dwindle, private facilities – which make up more than 80 per cent of the sector in Lebanon – have been able to deploy their resources and expand testing services successfully. For example, the Lebanese American University hospital in the capital is running mobile clinics to provide testing for people living in remote areas. Another private hospital has gone further and developed robots to facilitate Covid-19 testing to prevent health workers from having direct contact with patients, thus reducing their risk of infection.

    However innovative and effective these measures may be, the cost of accessing the services is a barrier for many in the country. One Covid-19 test from the private sector can cost between 100,000 and 200,000 Lebanese pounds, equivalent to US $66–130 before the devaluation of the Lebanese pound. With the current economic crisis and unprecedented unemployment levels, purchasing a test is simply not an option for many. Moreover, the health system response to Covid-19 has failed to adequately incorporate the health needs of vulnerable groups, including refugees and migrants, people living in poverty 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 conditions, limited access to services and higher poverty levels.

    Housing conditions

    In alignment with Lebanese government policy, no formal refugee camps have been established in Lebanon in response to the influx of Syrian refugees in 2011. Around one-third of those registered as refugees live in informal settlements or ‘non-residential structures’, where it is common for more than one family to live together in a single tent or unit. Sharing living spaces with families is also a common practice among refugees living in residential structures.

    Living in overcrowded conditions in these residences, the risk posed to refugees sharply increases, particularly for those who live in informal settlements. This is mainly because access to sanitation facilities and adequate water is limited or lacking, and following certain public health measures to prevent the spread of the virus, such as social distancing, hand washing and self-isolation, has proven to be nearly impossible. Unfortunately, living conditions for most refugees have dramatically deteriorated of late, with a survey by UNHCR indicating that the number of Syrian refugees living in sub-standard conditions has increased significantly. Many are seeking more affordable options, but this usually entails

    Health care delivery

    A 2019 assessment by UNHCR found that just a third of Syrian refugees had regular employment.

    The way that health care is delivered to Syrian refugees is heavily influenced by where and in what setting refugees are staying in Lebanon. Generally, basic health care for registered refugees is subsidized and facilitated by the UNHCR in Lebanon. Some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) also provide health care, either through their own established health facilities or by subsidizing health care provided by the existing Lebanese public health facilities. In some cases, NGOs also provided some health services in camps, including health education and promotion.

    However, during the coronavirus outbreak, the imposed lockdown measures and the additional restrictions on Syrian refugees put in place by some municipalities have had a huge impact on their access to health care. NGOs reported their inability to deliver medication or provide medical consultations due to the outbreak response measures, putting many vulnerable refugees with underlying health conditions at additional risk.

    Socio-economic status

    During crises, refugees and migrants are among the first vulnerable groups to suffer job losses and health insecurity. Lebanon is no exception. Even before the financial meltdown in Lebanon, Syrian refugees had become more economically vulnerable. They are permitted to work only in a limited number of low-skilled jobs, and only if they are sponsored by a Lebanese national; a 2019 UNHCR assessment found that just a third of Syrian refugees had regular employment while almost three-quarters(73 per cent) lived in poverty.

    Besides being badly hit by the economic crisis, Syrians have faced further 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 basic needs. Refugees who, before the pandemic, were already making ends meet by cutting their expenditure on food, health and education, are now struggling to survive in the face of further economic hardship. Recently, humanitarian agencies have warned that the risks of starvation facing Syrian refugees in Lebanon could even exceed the risks of Covid-19.

    Barriers to refugees’ access to Covid-19 testing

    While testing plays a central role in managing the spread of Covid-19, Syrian refugees face considerable difficulties in accessing this service. These are rooted in their long-term marginalization in the country, the impacts of discriminatory treatment by local officials and a wider failure to communicate effectively with refugees — a reflection of the government’s reluctance more generally to develop a more inclusive approach to the Syrian population in Lebanon.

    Unclear communication

    At the beginning of the outbreak, it was unclear how Syrian refugees could access coronavirus testing and treatment. The government announced that the test was available for free for everyone with coronavirus-like symptoms, without stating whether refugees were included in this service. Later in April, UNHCR stated that any refugee who needed to access Covid-19 testing and treatment must first go through Ministry of Health screening via a hotline dedicated for this purpose. After the screening, a referral to Rafik Al-Hariri hospital (the main public hospital dealing with Covid-19 patients) might be possible, where the testing has been offered for free. Furthermore, UNHCR announced that it would cover the cost of treatment for Syrian refugees who contract the virus, but only if they have passed the ministry’s screening. Yet some refugees expressed their fears over seeking testing or treatment for a variety of reasons. For example, it is unclear what type of information the ministry will collect through this screening process. As many refugees have been forced to live in Lebanon without residency permits, given the difficulties in securing them, many are concerned that testing could put them at risk of harassment.

    Marginalization

    Refugees and migrants are often the first to be stigmatized and are often unjustifiably blamed for spreading viruses. A number of Lebanese local officials and even some civilians have made the link, without evidence, between the outbreak and refugees. In a wider context of social exclusion, misinformation and anti-refugee sentiment have led to the introduction of discriminatory restrictions on Syrian refugees, especially those residing in rural areas and small towns. Some locals reported that they received messages from their local council to report the arrival of any new Syrian family, on the suspicion they might have fled from the camps to escape the spread of the virus. One local council even ordered residents not to let available flats or houses to any refugees coming from outside the town.

    Some even went further and performed ‘surveillance’ of refugees residing in their areas, with activists reporting that a Syrian family was evicted after being suspected of contracting the virus. This came after the town’s pharmacist reported to the local council that a member of a Syrian family, a young boy, purchased paracetamol tablets for his sick father. The family was evicted from their home and was in danger of becoming homeless without even being given the chance to check the validity of the accusation or to perform a coronavirus test. Unfortunately, this behaviour could easily result in other refugees choosing in future to avoid seeking medical help and treatment, with life-threatening implications for vulnerable individuals and for the country’s public health as a whole.

    Discriminatory restrictions on movement

    In addition, local authorities in some regions of the country have introduced further restrictions on the movement of Syrian refugees that do not necessarily apply to Lebanese residents. According to Human Rights Watch, at least 21 Lebanese municipalities have applied discriminatory restrictions on Syrian refugees. For example, a municipality in Bekaa has allowed Syrian refugees only four hours per day to leave their homes to perform essential tasks, while Lebanese residents are entitled to much more time to perform the same tasks. The local council deems these measures necessary in order to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

    However, tight restrictions on the movement of Syrian refugees, such as curfews, existed even prior to the Covid-19 outbreak and as a result of increasing social tensions and anti-Syrian sentiment in the country. Sadly, these practices have been exacerbated during the coronavirus pandemic. Many refugees have not even been given the chance to escape overcrowding and seek better quality housing conditions.

    Photo: 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 / Ali Hashisho/Reuters.