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Promoting Human Rights and Freedoms and Inclusive Data Culture for Internet Governance in Kenya
During the forum, UNESCO participated in an expert panel session titled: Human rights and freedoms – Harmful content in the digital arena. This session featured discussions led by panelists drawn from , The (GIZ) GmbH, and Code 4 Africa and UNESCO.
Ms. Angela Minayo, Program Officer from KICTANet indicated that women were among the most affected groups by online harassment affecting their participation in discussions. She also highlighted the unique challenges women face with respect to misinformation, hate speech and disinformation in online spaces.
John Okande, Programme Officer at UNESCO emphasized on the importance of mainstreaming human rights principles on digital platforms and promotion of media and information literacy competencies. He further stated that the increased incidences of cyber bullying, proliferation of hate speech, and increase of data privacy issues on platforms, efforts should be given to remedy these issues for an ensured healthy digital ecosystem. He also highlighted various initiatives by UNESCO including the guidelines for regulation of social media platforms, and the recently launched Kenyan coalition on freedom of expression and content moderation.
Allan Cheboi, Senior Manager for Investigations at Code 4 Africa discussed the role of information disorder and foreign interference in exacerbating for the spread of online hate speech, cyber bullying and other human rights violations.
Ms. Rose Mosero, Deputy Data Protection Commissioner, Office of the Data Protection Commissioner, while delivering a keynote address called for a multi-stakeholders’ approach to internet policy development that upholds human rights, transparency, equity and privacy.
Dr. Ololade Shyllon, Head of Privacy Policy, Africa, Middle East and Turkey, Meta stressed the importance of ensuring that privacy and data protection laws are developed before data is collected by platforms and not vice versa. Highlighting that there is a growing tendency of making laws to suit data.
David Omwoyo, Chief Executive Officer of the Media Council of Kenya reiterated on the need for continuous advocacy for the development of a common internet governance principles and a shift towards participatory rights that will encourages healthy engagement and participation of online.
Eng. John Tanui, Permanent Secretary, State Department of ICT and Digital Economy highlighted the various initiatives by the government to promote innovation and to harness emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence. He also welcomed feedback from local experts and stakeholders on measures that the government could adopt and prioritise to grow Kenya’s digital economy.
Key challenges identified during the discussions and expert panels included; an unskilled labour force in the data protection space, a lack of a data governance framework, and lack of data literacy among the citizens in the country. The hybrid event brought together at least 300 in-person and 200 online participants from government, private sector, civil society, tech community, and academia to discuss issues in the field of internet governance. Topics included human rights and freedoms, harmful content online, digital divides and inclusion, AI and emerging technologies, cybersecurity, cybercrime and online safety, and data governance and trust.
The UNESCO EU-funded "Social Media 4 Peace" project seeks to strengthen the resilience of societies to potentially harmful content spread online, in particular hate speech inciting violence while protecting freedom of expression and enhancing the promotion of peace through digital technologies, notably social media. The project is also being implemented in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, and Colombia.
